ASER 2024: Over 80% children aged 14-16 know how to use smartphones, but only 57% use them for educational purposes
Seventy-six per cent of the surveyed children said that they had used smartphones for social media, according to the report.
Around 82.2 per cent of children aged 14-16 in India know how to use a smartphone, but only 57 per cent of them use it for activities related to education, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) or ASER 2024 released today, January 28, 2025.
Seventy-six per cent of the surveyed children said that they had used it for social media, according to the report.
This time, the surveyors reached out to 6,49,491 children in 17,997 villages in the country.
In a press release, Pratham Education Foundation, which facilitated the nationwide household survey, said this was the first time ASER included a section on digital literacy focusing on children in the 14-16 years age group.
Access to smartphone
According to the report, access to smartphones among Indian children in the 14-16 age group is close to universal. Almost 90 per cent of surveyed girls and boys reported having a smartphone at home, and around 82.2 per cent reported knowing how to use a smartphone (85.5 per cent of boys and 79.4 per cent of girls).
The report highlighted that when it comes to ownership, there is a larger gap – 36.2 per cent of boys compared to 26.9 per cent of girls reported owning their own smartphone.
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Social media
Among the surveyed children who used social media, 62 per cent said they knew how to block and report a profile, 55.2 per cent knew how to make a profile private and 57.7 per cent knew how to change a password.
Boys were more aware of these safety features than girls, the report stated.
Digital skills
On the day of the survey, 70.2 per cent of boys and 62.2 per cent of girls brought a smartphone (their own/from a family member or friend) to use for digital tasks.
The surveyors asked them to perform three tasks: set an alarm, browse for specific information, and locate a YouTube video. If they could locate the video, they were asked to share it using a messaging platform.
“More than three-quarters of children to whom these tasks were given were able to perform each of these tasks successfully. Among those who could locate the video on YouTube, over 90 per cent were able to share it,” the report said.
