New Delhi. Over 82% of teens (14-16 years) know how to use smartphones, but only 57% of this age group use it for education, while 76% use the device for social media.
Surprisingly, both boys and girls are equally inclined to study through smartphones, but in the case of social media, boys (78.8%) are ahead of girls (73.4%). Kerala tops this data in India, where more than 80% of children use smartphones for studies and more than 90% for social media, which shows the high digital literacy of the state.
Further data, a survey conducted by the NGO Pratham based on a survey of over 6.4 lakh children across 605 rural districts of India, highlights the increasing access to digital devices in rural households. States such as Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh lag behind in both access and usage.
Smartphone access is universal
When the data looked at how many children have a smartphone at home, it was found that about 90% of children in this age group reported that they have a smartphone at home. However, only 82.2% of these children know how to use it, with a notable difference between boys (85.5%) and girls (79.4%). ASER data has also highlighted the rapid increase in the availability of smartphones in rural India. In 2018, 36% of rural households owned smartphones, which has increased to 74% in 2022 and now to 84%. Similarly, the proportion of children aged 14-16 years owning a smartphone has increased from 19% in 2022 to 31% this year.
Smartphone Ownership
Although ownership is low in this age group, it increases with age. According to the report, if we talk about ownership statistics, then it is also dominated by boys. The report states that among the children who have a smartphone, 27% of 14-year-olds and 37.8% of 16-year-olds said that they have their own phone. Apart from this, a big difference in smartphone ownership is that 36.2% of boys said that they have their own smartphone, while only 26.9% of girls said so.
