Chennai: A study covering ‘5,987’ children in Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana has claimed that as many as 94 per cent of students don’t have access to smartphones or internet to pursue online education.
With online education has becoming the norm amidst the Covid-induced lockdown, with all schools and educational institutions being closed since the end of March, the study was conducted by CRY to find out internet accessibility of children in the age-group of 11 to 18 years.
It found that nine per cent of respondents from Karnataka owned smartphones, in Tamilnadu only three per cent out of 1,740 children had access to phones.
The survey also found that the annual income of 95 per cent of the families is less than Rs 1 lakh. “Without substantial resources and with bare minimum affordability, having a smartphone is a luxury that more than two-thirds of these families can only hope for,” it said.
While six per cent of the children have a smartphone, 29 per cent use their family membersā phones. Further, 55 per cent of the children interviewed get access to smartphones for three days a week or less, while 77 per cent get access to smartphones for less than two hours a day.