Major study into children's screen time found wellbeing can be impacted
One of the largest ever studies on screen time use among children has concluded that higher use can have multiple impacts on a young person’s wellbeing
One of the biggest ever studies into children's screen time has found it can harm their wellbeing just as much as poverty.
Researchers said that the impacts are “similar in magnitude to or larger” than other factors linked to child development and mental health outcomes, including level of wealth, parenting behaviours and whether or not they were born preterm.
Higher screen use for gaming, social media and streaming can lead to lower academic achievement and language development issues, the study suggests.
Children who spend more time on screens were also found to have higher “socioemotional” and mental health problems, researchers found.
Academics conducted a so-called umbrella review, which summarises results from previous large reviews on the topic.
Meanwhile, reacting to the study, Rachel who runs Mumbler in Leeds and Sheffield said she thinks screen time can be used in moderation.
The mum-of-two said: "We do let our children have screens and actually, my two children are 10 and seven and all their homework from school are set on screens.
They don't get them, on sheets like maths homework, every week its on computers."
Rachel, who lives in Leeds went on to say: "Our kids are both really active, we go on days out all the time. they both do a lot of sports and activities. We see screens as down time for them.
The review, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, examined data on more than 2.8 million children across 64 countries."
Researchers found longer durations of digital and social media use were linked to “less favourable outcomes across multiple (although not all) measured domains of children’s developmental health”.
They found that greater screen exposure was associated with overall lower grades at school.
When academics examined specific subjects, screen time did not appear to be linked to maths, reading or science attainment, but they said these are “among the least studied” so the finding may be due to a lack of evidence.
Researchers, led by academics at the University of Calgary in Canada, did find that higher screen time was also linked to poorer language development.
When they looked at mental health, they found that higher screen use was linked to emotional and “peer problems”; “internalising behaviour” – which includes symptoms of depression and anxiety – and externalising behaviour – including aggression and ADHD symptoms.
“Our review revealed that higher so-called doses of screen exposure are associated with lower overall academic achievement and poorer language development, as well as higher internalising and externalising behaviour, emotional problems and peer problems,” the authors wrote.
They added: “Notably, these effect sizes are similar in magnitude to or larger than those reported for other well-established predictors of children’s outcomes, such as socioeconomic status, parenting behaviour and preterm birth.”
They concluded: “This umbrella review provides quantitative evidence indicating that longer durations of digital and social media exposure were associated with some aspects of development and mental health, including lower academic achievement and language development and higher socioemotional and mental health problems, but not other aspects (eg, executive functioning, pro-sociality, and reading, math, and science).
“Taken together, the findings suggest that screen use may represent one potentially modifiable factor associated with children’s well-being across multiple domains.”