Study: children can spend hours in front of a screen without harm to their health
Miscellaneous / / October 15, 2021
Gadgets will not cause behavioral impairment or mental distress.
Even when children spend five hours a day in front of a screen - be it a computer, TV or smartphone - it does not harm their mental health. To such conclusion sewn by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who conducted a large-scale study of the cognitive development of the brain of adolescents.
This work was the largest long-term study of its kind ever conducted in the United States. It was attended by over 12,000 children aged 9-10 years from different sectors of society and ethnicity. The researchers wanted to find out how screen time relates to some of the most important aspects of children's lives: sleep, mental health, behavior, and friendships.
Research resultsScreen time and early adolescent mental health, academic, and social outcomes in 9- and 10-year old children: Utilizing the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development ℠ (ABCD) Study, recently published in PLOS One, confirmed that there is no clear link between electronic device use and a child's depression or anxiety.
Sometimes, more screen time was associated with stronger peer relationships. And this applies to both boys and girls - both of them made more friends. Video games were one of the reasons, as it is a social activity that promotes the establishment of new friendships. The same goes for social media and text messaging.
There was also a negative correlation, with more screen time leading to attention problems, poor sleep, poor academic performance, aggression, and bad behavior. However, the relationship between cause and effect turned out to be so small that it cannot be taken seriously at the clinical level.
When some children received lower scores and others higher, screen time explained only 2% of the difference in grades. This suggests that differences in academic performance are determined by a much wider range of variables, and the time behind the gadget's screen is just a small piece of a large puzzle.
Scientists have come to the conclusion that their research does not allow to declare the presence of a causal relationship. They plan to continue to monitor these children until they are 20 years old. This will allow us to study how screen time can affect children throughout their adolescence, when there are many more symptoms of mental disorders.
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