The Upside of Screen Time
Screen time is not inherently bad.
Technology used by schools throughout COVID was vital in preventing every single person in education from 2020 to 2022 from missing out on 2 full years of learning – leaving an entire generation heavily disadvantaged.
Being able to see the faces of their grandchildren on phone screens saved the lives of some otherwise deeply isolated and lonely Grandparents.
Technology and screens have the power to deliver great good at many levels, but moderation is vital to preserve that good, and other elements of life must be boosted to maintain balance.
The Unseen Effects of the Screen
Taking the above into account, almost every source I read agreed on one thing… time spent staring at screens starts to affect mood.
Two hours seems to be the cut-off, any more than that and negative effects creep in.
A study on the ‘Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents’ shows that, almost without exception, more than 2 hours a day total screen time sees an increase in the percentage of 6 to 17 year olds that:
Are not curious,
Do not stay calm when challenged,
Do not finish tasks started,
Argue too much with their caregivers; and
Have experienced, or have, depression and/or anxiety.
The following graphs (Source: Science Direct) show the relationship between daily screen time (increasing from 0 to 7+ hours) and the presence of the behaviours listed above.
You don’t have to look too closely to identify roughly where the 2-hour mark lies in all of them.
Children and Young People's Mental Health
Record numbers of children and young people are experiencing anxiety and depression.
It’s important to note that while total numbers have gone up, that increase is in some part due to young people feeling more able to talk openly about their mental state than ever before.
That empowerment may have come from the screen itself through mental health ambassadors spreading the message that “it’s ok to not be ok”.
This message is wonderful and powerful and if social media is the vehicle for its mass circulation, then it deserves credit.
But while calm, quiet, pure corners of the internet do exist, they are hard to find.
You’ve got to wade through the mire of everyone else’s overnight financial and professional success and look past the blinding lights of their physical ‘perfection’.
The screen forces us to compare ourselves to levels of wealth that those boasting to have are exaggerating massively, physical standards that only steroids can sculpt, and levels of beauty that even the people on the screens need filters to achieve…though of course they never admit it.
This normalisation of false, unattainable standards is just one of many routes to screen time-induced anxiety.
A recent study by the University of London found that 90% of women reported using a filter or editing their photos before posting to even out their skin tone, reshape their jaw or nose, shave off weight, brighten or bronze their skin or whiten their teeth (Source: Science Daily).
Many of the young women taking part in the study also described regularly seeing advertisements or push notifications for cosmetic procedures – particularly for teeth whitening, lip fillers, and surgery to enhance face and body features.
I apologise for the doom and gloom factor here – but it’s so important to fully understand a problem in order to gauge how important it is to try and find solutions.
In 2019, 1 in 3 teenagers reported having a chronic anxiety disorder. About 20% of all teens experience depression before they reach adulthood, and between 10% to 15% suffer from symptoms at any one time.
(Source: Harvard Health)
Correlation and causation are not one and the same and we cannot quantify ‘damage per screen minute’.
However, even taking this into account and in the absence of clinical, absolute proof – we can let common sense prevail and say less screen time would be better for the mental health of children and young people.
My next blog will look into what tools we can give the younger generation to not only slow the tide, but to reverse some of the impact screens have already had. Look out for ‘Giving Young People the Tools to Fight Back’.
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