An empirical study of the relationship between short video usage, attention and academic achievement among elementary school students

Due to their entertainment functions and easy accessibility, short-video have become popular among elementary school students. However, there is limited scientific researches on the relationship between short video usage and attention and academic performance, specially for elementary school students, as well as its underlying mechanisms. This paper aims to provide a basis for managing the use of short videos among elementary school students through empirical research. Using a stratified cluster sampling method ,we selected 1052 elementary school students from two elementary school in Shenzhen, dividing the six grades of elementary school into lower grades, middle grades and upper grades. Then we made a self-administered questionnaire to measure the extent of short video usage and recorded the results of the midterm proficiency test in the first semester and the opening proficiency test in the second semester to measure academic performance, as well as the Attention Test for Adolescents were used to measure the attention span of the students. SPSS29.0 was used for descriptive statistics and correlation analysis of the data, and Mplus8.0 was used to validate the relationship between the variables through path analysis. We found 1) Higher levels of short-video use were associated with lower academic achievement (r=-0.236, p<0.001); 2) Higher levels of short-video use were associated with lower attention scores ( β =-0.092, p<0.001); and 3) Attention partially mediated the effect between short-video use and academic achievement: the short-video-use-to-achievement The percentage of direct effect in the total effect is 85.71%, and the percentage of indirect effect through the mediating factor of attention is 14.29%.