Don’t let on... but screens won’t make your teens unhappy
SCIENTISTS have dismissed fears that spending too many hours staring at screens affects a teenager’s mental health.
A team of researchers from Oxford University said there was ‘little clear- cut evidence’ that screen time is harmful.
Their study of 17,000 teenagers also found that the use of digital screens up to two hours before bedtime had no significant effect on their wellbeing.
The findings fly in the face of recent recommendations by the country’s Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies. In her official
‘Little clear-cut evidence’
advice to parents and carers, Dame Sally advocated a ‘precautionary approach’ and warned phones should be left outside the bedroom at night. She also recommended ‘screen-free meal times’ so families interact face to face’.
The Oxford team analysed data from the UK, Ireland and the US to support their conclusions. Researchers assessed how much time an adolescent spent on screens per day, including both self-reported measures and time-use diaries. Their wellbeing was assessed by their answers to a series of questions.
The research found adolescents’ total screen time per day had little impact on their mental health, both on weekends and weekdays.
Amy Orben, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and college lecturer at Queen’s College, Oxford, said: ‘ Implementing best practice statistical and methodological techniques we found little evidence for substantial negative associations between digital-screen engagement and adolescent wellbeing.’
Professor Andrew Przybylski, director of research at the OII said: ‘While psychological science can be a powerful tool for understanding the link between screen use and adolescent wellbeing, it still routinely fails to supply high- quality, transparent and objective investigations into growing concerns about digital technologies.
‘We found little clear-cut evidence that screen time decreases adolescent wellbeing, even if the use of digital technology occurs directly before bedtime.’
The insights come days before the anticipated release of the Government’s White Paper on Online Harms, which is expected to set out plans for legislation governing social media companies.
The Oxford findings contradict a UN-backed report released last month that found a strong link between smartphone usage and unhappiness in adolescents.
It revealed that teenagers’ overall happiness has gone down as digital media use increased. It said that the soaring depression rates among teenagers may be caused partly by ‘people feeling their lives are inferior compared to the glamorous “highlight reels” of others’ social media pages’.
Girls who spent five or more hours a day on social media were three times more likely to be depressed than those who did not use online sites at all. It reported that teens who spent a large amount of time online doubled their chances of unhappiness.