The Impact of Gadget Use on Learning Concentration among Secondary School Students: A Thematic Analysis of Multi-Perspective Interviews
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62503/ijer.1.1.17-30Keywords:
gadget use, learning concentration, thematic analysis, source triangulation, self-regulation, digital educationAbstract
Widespread gadget use among students raises concerns about declining learning concentration, yet most prior research relies on single-perspective survey designs that capture only one stakeholder group at a time. This study maps thematic patterns in the impact of gadget use on students' learning concentration and the management strategies proposed by teachers, students, parents, and educational psychologists. A descriptive qualitative design with thematic analysis was applied to one structured interview transcript involving four substantive informants. Data were collected through document acquisition, segmentation, and staged coding, then analyzed following six phases of thematic analysis to identify patterns and assess convergence across informants. The analysis identified four negative impact patterns consistently corroborated across informants: declining attention span, digital addiction and procrastination, sleep disturbance, and reduced social interaction. It also identified five management strategies targeting teachers, parents, and students, with adult role modeling emerging as the most consistent theme. Source triangulation showed strong convergence across roles. The novelty of this study lies in extending the self-regulation framework by showing that failure to regulate digital distraction is an ecosystemic phenomenon rather than merely an individual issue. Its originality lies in the analytic approach itself: rather than separate single-perspective surveys, this study triangulates four stakeholder perspectives within a single dialogic interview event, a design rarely used in this research area. Practically and methodologically, the study offers evidence that effective intervention requires cross-actor collaboration rather than unilateral policy, and demonstrates a replicable procedure for multi-perspective source triangulation in future research on gadget use and learning concentration.
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