Recent Studies
From TVs to tablets: the relation between device-specific screen time and health-related behaviors and characteristics (August 2020)
New research has found links between the amount of time that people spend in front of some screened devices and various negative health outcomes. Screen-based devices and activities can adversely affect physical activity, sleep and sleep quality, and stress. They are further associated with poorer dietary choices, which are connected to risk factors, and incidence of, chronic disease.
Parenting Children in the Age of Screens (July 2020)
New Pew research shows that most parents in the U.S. believe that parenting is harder today than it was just two decades ago, with most citing technologies like social media and digital devices as a reason: 84% of parents of a child under the age of 12 say they know how much screen time is appropriate, yet 71% of parents are concerned about screen overuse. 66% say parenting is harder than it was 20 years ago, with a combined 47% citing technology and social media as the primary reason; the next most popular reason, “changing morals, more drugs/violence,” represented only 16% of parents. 77% say children under 12 should not have their own smartphone, nearly half of whom say not before 15 or not at all.
Preliminary multiple regression showed only sleep quality was significantly different between children with and without ADHD. Significant triple mediation effects suggested diet, physical activity, and screen time mediated the ADHD impact on sleep quality. Researchers and practitioners may incorporate the findings to develop intervention models for children with ADHD attending to the mediational roles of lifestyle factors to improve sleep quality.
The study from the University of Glasgow followed almost 500,000 participants over a 12-year period between 2006 and 2018. The findings included that health risks associated with screen time, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, were at their lowest when daily TV time was two hours or less. If all participants limited television time to two hours a day, potentially 5.62% of all deaths and 7.97% of deaths due to cardiovascular disease could have been prevented or delayed. It was not just the traditional television screen that was included in the study, watching videos on a mobile phone counted too.
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic emerged in Wuhan, China, spread nationwide and then onto half a dozen other countries between December 2019 and early 2020. The implementation of unprecedented strict quarantine measures in China has kept a large number of people in isolation and affected many aspects of people’s lives. It has also triggered a wide variety of psychological problems, such as panic disorder, anxiety and depression. This study is the first nationwide large-scale survey of psychological distress in the general population of China during the COVID-19 epidemic.
The importance of social factors in the association between physical activity and depression in children (June 2020)
We show and replicate that social–physical activities are associated with lower depressive symptoms. Next, we demonstrate that social connections, measured by number of close friends, partially mediate the association between social–physical activities and lower depressive symptoms.
Dangerous Skills Got Certified: Measuring the Trustworthiness of Amazon Alexa Platform (June 2020)
During a recently concluded 12-month study of the Alexa Skills Store review process, researchers received certification of 234 policy-breaking Alexa skills (of 234 attempted) into the official Alexa store. With each project, researchers notified Amazon of the deficiencies, Amazon indicated it would rectify the issues, and then new research emerged months later showing that the deficiencies persisted. Researchers identified similar deficiencies in existing skills marketed to children across the platform.
A first of its kind in Canada, the study found parents of young children reporting high levels of life or parenting stress were less likely to monitor and limit their kids' screen use and more likely to use their own devices in front of their children. These findings are significant when considered with previous research showing that (1) parenting practices influence how much time children spend on screens and (2) high screen use is linked to health issues in children, such as lower activity levels, obesity and even language delays in younger children.
Social media use and mental health: A review. (May 2020)
Profs. Jonathan Haidt (NYU-Stern) and Jean Twenge (San Diego State U) curate an ongoing open-source literature review detailing the links between social media use and mental health. Haidt and Twenge begin with articles published in or after 2014 that are being cited by scholars on either side of the debate. They pick 2014 because the increase in adolescent depression and anxiety is not clearly visible until around 2013, and it takes a while for data to show up in a published paper.
Loneliness around the world: Age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness (April 2020)
Survey responses from 237 countries indicates that young people living in individualistic societies report feeling more lonely than older people living in collectivist societies, in frequency, intensity, and duration.
Associations Between Screen Use and Child Language Skills: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (March 2020)
A new study published in JAMA looks at the time spent by kids looking at a screen and the development of their language skills. The team of researchers from the University of Calgary, Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of Washington, Seattle collaborated to look at the studies that have researched the association of screen use among kids and their language development. The team writes that there have been several studies that have found an adverse relationship between the two and this study is a collation of the data that exists from these studies.
The study, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, found that 60 minutes of simple movement each day at age 12 was linked to an average 10% reduction in depression at age 18. The types of movement ranged from running and biking to walking, doing chores, painting or playing an instrument.
Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health (Feb 2020)
Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, this study shows that smartphones and social media “may be taking a big toll on teens' mental health.” The study’s lead author Dr. Elia Abi-Jaoude, a psychiatrist at The Hospital for Sick Children and Toronto Western Hospital, advises that “[p]hysicians, teachers and families need to work together with youth to decrease possible harmful effects of smartphones and social media on their relationships, sense of self, sleep, academic performance, and emotional well-being."
Sleep duration, brain structure, and psychiatric and cognitive problems in children (Feb 2020)
Research shows that sleep deprivation, due in part to increased screen usage, changes brain structure and impairs cognition.
Being cyberbullied was associated with greater psychiatric symptom severity. Further, histories of emotional abuse were correlated with recent cyberbullying. These data suggest that individuals with histories of childhood trauma also seem vulnerable to continued adverse experiences during adolescence.
This study from the World Health Organization shows that the mental health of secondary school-aged children has worsened in recent years. Dr Ellen Klemera, senior research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, which hosted the study, explained that smartphones and social media “can have a negative impact on wellbeing, particularly if they are exposed to cyber-bullying or if it affects their sleep.” She noted that an “[i]ncrease in sleep difficulties, feeling low and self-harm are just some of the issues that need to be addressed.”
Association of Trajectory and Covariates of Children's Screen Media Time (Nov 2019)
“Our results indicate that screen habits begin early,” said Edwina Yeung, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and an investigator in the Epidemiology Branch of NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). “This finding suggests that interventions to reduce screen time could have a better chance of success if introduced early.”
Screen time and problem behaviors in children: exploring the mediating role of sleep duration (Nov. 2019)
Greater time spent in screen time behavior was associated with greater problem behaviors among children. There was strong evidence that longer sleep duration was associated with reduced problem behaviors. While sleep duration mediated the effects of screen time on problem behaviors, other potential mediating variables need to be investigated in future research.
In this cross-sectional study of 47 healthy prekindergarten children, screen use greater than that recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines was associated with (1) lower measures of microstructural organization and myelination of brain white matter tracts that support language and emergent literacy skills and (2) corresponding cognitive assessments.
In this cohort study of 6595 US adolescents, increased time spent using social media per day was prospectively associated with increased odds of reporting high levels of internalizing and comorbid internalizing and externalizing problems, even after adjusting for history of mental health problems.
This study shows that “although the representation of semantic information in the human brain is quite complex, the semantic representations evoked by listening versus reading are almost identical. These results suggest that the representation of language semantics is independent of the sensory modality through which the semantic information is received.” In other words, we understand through listening as well as we do through reading.
24-Hour Movement Behaviors and Impulsivity (Sept 2019)
Findings support efforts to determine if limiting recreational screen time while promoting adequate sleep enhances the treatment and prevention of impulsivity-related disorders.
Beyond demographics and stimulant use, this study highlights abstract reasoning as an important cognitive variable and reaffirms social problems and screen time as significant correlates of BMI and as modifiable therapeutic targets. Prospective data are needed to understand the predictive power of these variables for BMI gain.
Does Educational Technology Help Students Learn? An analysis of the connection between digital devices and learning. (June 2019)
The study shows that the relationship between technology and performance is rarely linear, and students worldwide appear to perform best on tests when they report a low-to-moderate use of school computers. Specifically, when students report having access to classroom computers and using these devices on an infrequent basis, they show better performance. But when students report using these devices every day and for several hours during the school day, performance decreases dramatically. In the U.S., this trend holds irrespective of the student’s background, such as their income status or identification as having a disability. This trend also holds regardless of the teacher’s background and preparation in technology-based instruction. It also shows that a potentially negative relationship between technology and performance may be more apparent among early grade levels, such as when tablets are used for reading literacy among U.S. elementary school students. This fits with prior studies that show that reading on electronic devices is less likely to improve young students’ reading ability.
Child depression and anxiety have been associated with electronic media use, but the comorbidity between the two has rarely been accounted for in analyses. We examined both child and parent reports of electronic media use in relation to parent-reported child depression and anxiety. Using survey and interview data collected for 9- to 11-year-olds from the 21-site adolescent brain cognitive development study, we conducted generalized linear mixed models. Our results demonstrated that electronic media use was more strongly associated with depression than anxiety, and that accounting for depression significantly reduced the relationship between electronic media use and anxiety. Different categories of electronic media showed differential relationships to anxiety and depression, with video gaming and video chatting related to anxiety, but video watching related to depression. These findings provide important data to ground theories of the mechanisms that contribute to these associations.
Trends in Suicide Among Youth Aged 10 to 19 Years in the United States, 1975 to 2016 (May 2019)
A study of youth aged 15 to 19 years showed suicide rates for female individuals more than doubled from 2007 to 2015, compared with a 31% increase for male individuals. An additional report found female youth aged 10 to 14 years experienced the largest percentage increase in suicide rates compared with other age groups, tripling from 0.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 1.5 per 100,000 in 2014. Research shows a sustained shift toward a highly lethal method such as hanging or suffocation by female youth, which could have grave public health implications and drive elevations in the rates of female suicide.
Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age (May 2019)
The World Health Organization has released a new set of recommendations about activity, behavior, and sleep for children younger than 5 that included specific directives about what it termed “sedentary screen time.” According to these new WHO guidelines, children between 2 and 5 should be limited to only 60 minutes of screen time per day (and the less the better). Children under 2, it says, should not spend any time with screens at all.
Screen-time is associated with inattention problems in preschoolers: Results from the CHILD birth cohort study (April 2019)
This study shows that increased screen-time in pre-school is associated with worse inattention problems: “We provide results from one of the largest birth cohort studies to examine screen-time exposure and behavioral morbidity in pre-school children. Screen-time above the two-hours threshold at 5-years was associated with an increased risk of clinically relevant externalizing morbidity and specifically inattention problems. The association between screen-time and behavioral morbidity was greater than any other risk factor including sleep, parenting stress, and socioeconomic factors. Our findings indicate that pre-school may be a critical period for supporting parents and families on education about limiting screen-time and supporting physical activity.”
Mobile Media Device Use is Associated with Expressive Language Delay in 18-Month-Old Children (March 2019)
A cross-sectional study assessed 893 children between the ages of six months and two years from 2011 to 2015. The study demonstrated a significant association between mobile media device use and parent-reported expressive speech delay in 18-month-old children.
The findings of this study support the notion of screen media activity related maturational coupling or structural correlation networks in the brain and provides evidence that individual differences of these networks have mixed consequences for psychopathology and cognitive performance.
Advertising in Young Children's Apps: A Content Analysis (Jan 2019)
A 2019 study by Jenny Radesky, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan, found that 95 percent of the most popular apps for young children — even premium “educational” apps, including some featuring beloved children’s book characters — included ads that were often “manipulative” and “disruptive.” It found high rates of mobile advertising through manipulative and disruptive methods. These results have implications for advertising regulation, parent media choices, and apps' educational value.
The percentage of young Americans experiencing certain types of mental health disorders has risen significantly over the past decade, with no corresponding increase in older adults, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. Cultural trends in the last 10 years may have had a larger effect on mood disorders and suicide-related outcomes among younger generations compared with older generations. This trend may be partially due to increased use of electronic communication and digital media, which may have changed modes of social interaction enough to affect mood disorders. Research shows that young people are not sleeping as much as they did in previous generations. The increase in digital media use may have had a bigger impact on teens and young adults because older adults' social lives are more stable and might have changed less than teens' social lives have in the last ten years. These results suggest a need for more research to understand how digital communication versus face-to-face social interaction influences mood disorders and suicide-related outcomes and to develop specialized interventions for younger age groups.
Selecting Appropriate Toys for Young Children in the Digital Era (Jan 2019)
For young children, the increase in screen time, which has evolved over the past decade, has taken place in association with a decrease in play, including both active play and play with toys. This is especially significant for young children’s development because screen time directly interferes with both play activities and parent-child interactions, and even educational media is typically watched without caregiver input. Furthermore, virtual toys (ie, screen games and/or applications) are increasingly designed to emulate and even replace physical toys. This potentially increases known risks of electronic media exposure, such as the promotion of aggressive behavior and obesity. The potential for these risks is especially great in the context of violence portrayed as humorous or justified, which can reinforce aggressive behavior and desensitize children to violence and its consequences. Although it has been suggested that there may be learning benefits in association with interactive media, there is presently no evidence to suggest that possible benefits of interactive media match those of active, creative, hands-on, and pretend play with more traditional toys.
No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression (Dec. 2018)
The limited use group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression over three weeks compared to the control group. Both groups showed significant decreases in anxiety and fear of missing out over baseline, suggesting a benefit of increased self-monitoring. The findings strongly suggest that limiting social media use to approximately 30 minutes per day may lead to significant improvement in well-being.
Nearly two out of three U.S. kids spend more than two hours a day looking at screens, a new analysis of activity levels finds. And those children perform worse on memory, language and thinking tests than kids who spend less time in front of a device, the study of over 4,500 8- to 11-year-olds shows.The finding, published online September 26 in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, bolsters concerns that heavy use of smartphones, tablets or televisions can hurt growing minds. It confirmed that meeting the physical movement recommendations was associated with superior global cognition. These findings highlight the importance of limiting recreational screen time and encouraging healthy sleep to improve cognition in children.
Are educational preschool apps designed to teach? An analysis of the app market (August 2018)
Over half of educational apps on mobile-app markets are for preschoolers, but little research has examined whether the designs of preschool apps are truly educational. Preschoolers process information differently from older learners (i.e., shorter attention spans), so app designs should be guided by developmental science. This content analysis of popular Apple and Android math and literacy preschool apps uses a developmental framework to code and analyze apps’ educational features. Findings show a wide variety of features apps used. However, few provided developmentally appropriate guidance, like scaffolded feedback. This study offers insights for improving apps to meaningfully teach preschoolers.
Screen Time: The Impact on Kids and Parenting (Aug 2018)
The research suggests that excessive screen time has a direct and negative effect on frontal lobe structure and functioning, and can also be addictive given the changes in dopamine functioning and receptors. Since this area of a child’s brain undergoes critical development until young adulthood, it makes sense that parents and professionals are concerned about the mass consumption of electronics by children. Parents, schools, pediatricians, professionals, and researchers need to continue to pay close attention to and intervene with screen time in structured and consistent ways across domains to foster the healthy bio-psycho-social development of our children.
Despite being digital natives, technology most affects adolescents' biomarkers of stress. Fathers and adolescents experienced rises in their CAR and higher IL-6 due to technology use. Bedtime and general use were related to an increase in CAR for adolescents.
Early electronic screen exposure and autistic-like symptoms (Feb 2018)
A new study in JAMA Pediatrics that indicates that early screen time can increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-like symptoms should give parents pause. The researchers found that children who had any television or video viewing at age 12 months had a 4.2% increased risk of showing ASD-like symptoms when they were aged 2 years. No association was seen with ASD risk. Children who had daily play with their parents at age 12 months saw their risk of ASD-like symptoms developing by age 2 years drop by 9%, and again there was no association seen with ASD risk. The current coronavirus crisis has led many families to relax family rules on screen time and other media usage during stay-at-home restrictions and self-quarantine, but this study highlights how important maintaining the boundaries are for young children who are still undergoing critical brain development.
Screen time and young children: Promoting health and development in a digital world (Nov 2017)
The digital landscape is evolving more quickly than research on the effects of screen media on the development, learning and family life of young children. This statement examines the potential benefits and risks of screen media in children younger than 5 years, focusing on developmental, psychosocial and physical health. Evidence-based guidance to optimize and support children’s early media experiences involves four principles: minimizing, mitigating, mindfully using and modelling healthy use of screens. Knowing how young children learn and develop informs best practice strategies for health care providers.
Sensory Metrics of Neuromechanical Trust (Sept 2017)
Today digital sources supply a historically unprecedented component of human sensorimotor data, the consumption of which is correlated with poorly understood maladies such as Internet addiction disorder and Internet gaming disorder. This study explores the biophysical and mathematical underpinnings of establishing trust in communications. It examines the experiences of digital disorientation and screen addiction: the neurological effects of overconsumption of digital stimuli and possible recalibrations of persistent flattened, two-dimensional interactions.
Screen-time is associated with inattention problems in preschoolers: Results from the CHILD birth cohort study (April 2017)
Pre-school children spend an average of two-hours daily using screens. We examined associations between screen-time on pre-school behavior using data from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) study. Researchers concluded that increased screen-time in pre-school is associated with worse inattention problems.
Digital Media and Sleep in Childhood and Adolescence (April 2017)
In >90% of these studies, more screen time was associated with delayed bedtimes and shorter total sleep time among children and adolescents. Computer use was more consistently associated with poor sleep outcomes than television, perhaps because television watching may be less interactive than computer-based activities.
Media and Young Minds (Nov 2016)
In summary, multiple developmental and health concerns continue to exist for young children using all forms of digital media to excess. Evidence is sufficient to recommend time limitations on digital media use for children 2 to 5 years to no more than 1 hour per day to allow children ample time to engage in other activities important to their health and development and to establish media viewing habits associated with lower risk of obesity later in life. In addition, encouraging parents to change to educational and prosocial content and engage with their children around technology will allow children to reap the most benefit from what they view.
Children and Adolescents and Digital Media (Nov 2016)
Children today are growing up in an era of highly personalized media use experiences; therefore, parents should be encouraged to develop personalized Family Media Use Plans for their families that attend to each child’s age, health, temperament, and developmental stage and ensure that each child can practice and benefit from the essentials for healthy growth and development, such as a healthy diet, good sleep hygiene, adequate physical activity, and positive social interactions. Parents should recognize and understand their own roles in modeling appropriate media use and balance between media time and other activities. Pediatricians can help families identify and adopt a healthy Family Media Use Plan, minimize unhealthy habits and behaviors, and recognize and address issues that occur related to the use of traditional and new media that can negatively affect health, wellness, social and personal development, and academic performance and success.
