New Delhi: The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 released Tuesday shows that while 82 percent of children in rural India aged 14-16 know how to use a smartphone, only 57 percent used it for educational purposes in the past week. In contrast, 76 percent of these children reported using their smartphones for social media during the same period. The annual report, based on a rural household survey that reached 6,49,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts in India, for the first time has a section on digital literacy, targeting children in the 14-16 age group.
This section covers self-reported data on smartphone access, ownership, and usage, along with a one-on-one assessment of basic digital skills. The ASER report notes that nearly 90 percent of boys and girls reported having access to a smartphone at home. But the ownership of smartphones among 14-16-year-olds remains relatively low, though it increases as they grow older.
The report highlights a significant “gender gap” in smartphone ownership: “Of the children who could use a smartphone, 27 percent of 14-year-olds and 37.8 percent of 16-year-olds reported having their own phone.” Additionally, the gender disparity is evident, with 36.
2 percent of boys owning a smartphone compared to just 26.9 percent of girls—a gap that is consistent across states. Emphasising that the use of a smartphone for educational activities was similar among girls and boys, the report states that girls were le.
