January 16, 2017

expert reaction to study investigating screen time and well-being in teenagers

A study in teenagers published in Psychological Science reported that the relationships between digital-screen time and mental well-being are nonlinear and that moderate engagement in digital activities is not harmful.

Dr Pete Etchells, Senior Lecturer in Biological Psychology, Bath Spa University, said:

“This is an excellent and timely addition to a controversial research literature that looks at the effects of screen time. The study takes a novel and nuanced approach to the question of whether different types of digital technology – TV, video games, smartphone and computer use – have any impact on childhood well-being, using an appropriately large data set.

“There are some important take home messages from this study. The first is that there isn’t a simple, linear relationship between technology use and well-being; instead, the relationship is more of an inverted u-shape.  In other words, the study shows that certain levels of technology use may actually be beneficial to children. The second is that there are differences in the effects that different types of screen use have, depending on the time of week they are used. For example, depending on the type of digital activity, children could spend between 20 minutes to more than 2 hours longer doing them at the weekend, before any negative effects could be seen.

“Finally, the study shows that where negative effects do exist, these are in fact quite weak, compared to other factors (such as getting a decent night’s sleep) which have previously been shown to have an influence on well-being.

“Taken altogether then, the study shows that we need to drastically reconsider the way we think about screen time – there just isn’t a simple negative correlation between using digital technology and wellbeing. It is an exemplary study in using open science practices to provide a genuinely useful new addition to the screen time debate.”

* ‘A Large-Scale Test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis: Quantifying the Relations Between Digital-Screen Use and the Mental Well-Being of Adolescents” by Przybylski et al. was published in Psychological Science

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/?s=%22screen%20time%22&cat

Declared interests

Dr Pete Etchells: “I can declare that I have no conflicts of interest in regards to providing comment on this paper.”