Multitasking harms mental health more than gaming

CHILDREN who consume more than one form of media simultaneously suffer more with mental health issues than those who spend several hours a day playing online games, a study found.

The findings also indicate that it is not the duration of a child’s screen time that leads to mental health issues, but the nature of their online habits.

In the UK, children aged between five and 16 now spend on average 6.3 hours of their day looking at a screen.

European scientists gave a questionnaire to 118 children aged between eight and 12 at a public primary school on the outskirts of Geneva in Switzerland.

It revealed that while children consume more and more digital media as they get older, this isn’t always bad for their mental wellbeing.

“We observe that children consume large amounts of media and media multitask substantially,” said Dr Pedro Cardoso-leite, the study’s co-author from the University of Luxembourg.

“Partial correlation analyses show that media multitasking specifically was mostly correlated with negative mental health, while playing video games was associated with faster responding and better mental health.”

Both overall media consumption and multitasking — such as listening to music while scrolling through social media — increased as the children got older, the researchers found.

At the age of 12, they spent on average eight hours and 14 minutes a day on digital devices compared with just four hours and 28 minutes at the age of eight.

Children who multitasked were more likely to suffer from mental health issues, including higher levels of distress, lower socio-emotional functioning, less sleep, less determination and more behavioural problems both at home and at school.

Those who played video games on the other hand, were less likely to suffer the same fate.

Dr Cardoso-leite said: “It is not uncommon to read that time in front of screens should be limited.

“The present paper indicates that such aggregate measures of media consumption are not sufficient and documents that the type of media used as well as how they are consumed both matter.”

There was no difference in multitasking scores or how much media was consumed overall between boys and girls.

Only when it came to video games did boys spend more time per day than girls, the researchers found.

The findings were published in the journal