Variations of perspectives of junior high school students who have participated in Smartphone Summit for appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones

This study investigated the variations of perspectives of junior high school students who had participated in Smartphone Summit for appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones. Smartphone Summit is an educational project designed to empower junior high school students to advocate appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones among older, same-age, and younger peers, within school communities and society as a whole. The participants were 26 students (7th and 8th grade) from 18 junior high schools in Okayama, a western Japanese city. In the project, the participants discussed pros and cons of the Internet and smartphones, and presented their ideas concerning possible activities to encourage their classmates to use the Internet and smartphones in appropriate ways with the help of various adult experts. A questionnaire was administered to measure the participants’ evaluation of their own and their classmates’ present smartphone usage as well as anticipated future smartphone usage. Results showed that the participants evaluated their own usage as more appropriate than that of their classmates and expected that future usage would be better for both themselves and their classmates than at present. Furthermore, the participants expected their classmates’ usage will change more significantly than their own because their classmates’ current usage seems relatively inappropriate and there would be larger room for improvement. From the analysis of patterns of participants’ impact expectation toward their peers, it was found that there were three types of perspectives: moderate, relatively lower, and relatively higher evaluation. Future research should focus on the factors influencing the participants’ perspectives.