I see news and forums claiming the problem is screens/smartphones and social media.

Given the big gap between the east and the west... does anybody know if these are somehow less used/abused in asian countries?

Any other reason why this gap might happen?

Thanks

Living in one Asian country, phone scrolling still happens with adults but kids get a lot of homework and definitely do it. Honestly excessive amounts, quantity over quality but at least studying is happening.

If some third type of country didn't do doomscrolling but ignored their homework to play outside, that's better than scrolling but it's still not homework.

> news and forums claiming the problem is screens/smartphones and social media

FTFA: “Digital distraction also affects the wider classroom. More than one in four students said that classmates were distracted by digital devices in most or every science lesson. Students surrounded by distracted classmates performed less well, were less engaged in learning and felt less connected to their school. Students who say they did not use AI to draft text for writing assignments outperformed those who say they did. Among frequent users, however, students who used AI to help them learn and were taught how to assess the quality of AI-generated information tended to perform better than those who received no such guidance.”

Here's a data point that should help:

Poland's math score dropped by just 5 points. As for other tests:

Science: -4

Reading: -7.

Much like with GDP per capita, my country is climbing the rankings, but only via walkover.

>Given the big gap between the east and the west

I thought the reason that China and Singapore were so far ahead of everyone else was that they were urban populations vs everyone else include rural areas.

I assumed that Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang were purely urban, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm very curious about this as well, because BSJZ is almost an entire proficiency level above (almost) everyone else. That's an insane gap.

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