Too much screen time for children linked to anxiety, depression

With television for a nanny, a mobile phone for prattling, and a tablet for gaming, children these days are surrounded by screens. It turns out too much screen time may actually be bad for your kid. According to a new study, heightened levels and diagnoses of anxiety or depression in children as young as two […]

With television for a nanny, a mobile phone for prattling, and a tablet for gaming, children these days are surrounded by screens. It turns out too much screen time may actually be bad for your kid.

According to a new study, heightened levels and diagnoses of anxiety or depression in children as young as two years are linked to too much time spent on gaming, smartphones and watching television

And the anxiety or depression doesn’t come from sitting before a screen all day. The difference is noticeable even after only one hour a day of time screen time: children and teenagers may begin to have less curiosity, their self control reduces, they become emotionally less stable and are increasingly unable to finish tasks, according to the San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge and University of Georgia psychology professor Keith Campbell.

Among other highlights of the study:

•     Moderate use of screens, at four hours each day, was also associated with lower psychological well-being than use of one hour a day.

•     Among preschoolers, high users of screens were twice as likely to often lose their temper and 46 percent more likely to not be able to calm down when excited.

•  Among teens aged 14-17, 42.2 percent of those who spent more than seven hours a day on screens did not finish tasks compared with 16.6 percent for those who spent one hour daily and 27.7 percent for those engaged for four hours of screen time.

•    About 9 percent of youth aged 11-13 who spent an hour with screens daily were not curious or interested in learning new things, compared with 13.8 percent who spent four hours on screen and 22.6 percent who spent more than seven hours with screens.

Twenge and Campbell’s results were published in an article, “Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study,” which appeared this month in Preventative Medicine Reports.

The findings come as young people continue to get greater access to digital technologies and are spending more time using electronic technology purely for entertainment.

As the same time, health officials are trying to identify best practices for managing technology addiction.

“Previous research on associations between screen time and psychological well-being among children and adolescents has been conflicting, leading some researchers to question the limits on screen time suggested by physician organizations,” Twenge and Campbell wrote in their paper.

Youth commonly spend an average of five to seven hours on screens during leisure time. And growing research indicates this amount of screen time has adverse effects on the overall health and well-being of youth.

This year, the World Health Organisation revised the revised International Classification of Diseases—and included gaming disorder for the first time.

The disorder was officially classified a diseases—a clarification to encourage increased attention of health professions to the risks of development of the disorder.

Twenge and Campbell analyzed a random sample of more than 40,300 surveys from the caregivers of children aged 2 to 17.

They excluded youth with conditions such autism, cerebral palsy and developmental delay, as they may have impacted a child’s day to day functioning.

They found that adolescents who spend more than seven hours a day on screens were twice as likely as those spending one hour to have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression – a significant finding.

“At first, I was surprised that the associations were larger for adolescents,” Twenge said.

“However, teens spend more time on their phones and on social media, and we know from other research that these activities are more strongly linked to low well-being than watching television and videos, which is most of younger children’s screen time.”

The study suggests recommendations on screen time limit to one hour per day for those aged 2 to 5, with a focus on high-quality programmes, are valid.

It also suggests limiting screen time to two hours a day for school-aged children and adolescents.