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Those glowing screens, all that stimulation and data—and all those young developing brains. It’s not a good mix, according to a new population-level study.
Children and teens who spend more hours per day watching TV, or with their faces in front of smartphones or other devices, have higher levels of anxiety and depression, and have less curiosity and self-control, according to the new study in the journal Preventative Medicine Reports.
The threshold is one hour per day, and all the time after that is linked to increasing problems, according to the two authors.
“These results show a general negative relationship between screen use and psychological well-being among children and adolescents,” the researchers write.
The population set was the massive National Survey of Children’s Health from 2016, which was administered by the U.S. Census Bureau. The two authors, Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, cross-referenced screen time responses in the survey with the other health metrics.
The data included more than 40,000 children in separate households and their caregivers. Eliminated from the population group were developmental problems that may have skewed the results, including autism, blindness, deafness, Down Syndrome, intellectual disability and other conditions.
The metrics included measures of anxiety and depression diagnoses; whether teens have seen a mental health professional or taken medication for a psychological issue; and among the younger children showing the ability to maintain self-control—how likely they are to lose their temper, and how easily they switch tasks.
Altogether, they compiled a “well-being” score.
The survey cross-referenced that well-being with total daily screen time.
The average total screen time for all of the children, from age two to 17, was 3.2 hours per day. For ages two to five, the average was 2.28 hours, mostly made up of TV and video games; by the 14-to-17 age group, that daily time grew to an average of 4.59 hours, with more than half of that accounting for electronic devices such as smartphones.
But some of the children were logging seven or more hours per day, between TV and digital knick-knacks. At the highest levels were the most problems—although even hour hours of screen time showed statistically significant decreased well-being, the researchers report.
“After one hour per day of use, more hours of daily screen time were associated with lowers psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficult making friends, less emotional stability and inability to finish tasks,” the papers states.
Aside from the kind of devices, the study did not appears to extrapolate the kinds of screen time the children were engaging in (e.g., social media, gaming, kinds of TV watching).
The study did hypothesize about some of the underlying causes among the older teens in the study group. For instance, the increased screen time could be part of Internet addiction, excessive gaming and problematic social media use. The spike in screen time could also be linked to less-quality sleep duration and quality—as well as less positive face-to-faces social interactions, when smartphones or other devices are around, according to the paper.
The study is just the latest in a growing literature identifying some of the harmful aspects of screen time. The paper points out that the World Health Organization included a video gaming disorder in its latest revision of the International Classification of Disease early this year.
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