Digital Screen Time Limits and Young Children's Psychological Well-Being: Evidence From a Population-Based Study

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Abstract

There is little empirical understanding of how young children's screen engagement links to their well-being. Data from 19,957 telephone interviews with parents of 2- to 5-year-olds assessed their children's digital screen use and psychological well-being in terms of caregiver attachment, resilience, curiosity, and positive affect in the past month. Evidence did not support implementing limits (< 1 or < 2 hr/day) as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, once variability in child ethnicity, age, gender, household income, and caregiver educational attainment were considered. Yet, small parabolic functions linked screen time to attachment and positive affect. Results suggest a critical cost-benefit analysis is needed to determine whether setting firm limits constitutes a judicious use of caregiver and professional resources.

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Most cited references 42

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A. S. Masten (2001)

The study of resilience in development has overturned many negative assumptions and deficit-focused models about children growing up under the threat of disadvantage and adversity. The most surprising conclusion emerging from studies of these children is the ordinariness of resilience. An examination of converging findings from variable-focused and person-focused investigations of these phenomena suggests that resilience is common and that it usually arises from the normative functions of human adaptational systems, with the greatest threats to human development being those that compromise these protective systems. The conclusion that resilience is made of ordinary rather than extraordinary processes offers a more positive outlook on human development and adaptation, as well as direction for policy and practice aimed at enhancing the development of children at risk for problems and psychopathology.

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A Large-Scale Test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis

Andrew K. Przybylski, Netta Weinstein (2016)

Although the time adolescents spend with digital technologies has sparked widespread concerns that their use might be negatively associated with mental well-being, these potential deleterious influences have not been rigorously studied. Using a preregistered plan for analyzing data collected from a representative sample of English adolescents ( n = 120,115), we obtained evidence that the links between digital-screen time and mental well-being are described by quadratic functions. Further, our results showed that these links vary as a function of when digital technologies are used (i.e., weekday vs. weekend), suggesting that a full understanding of the impact of these recreational activities will require examining their functionality among other daily pursuits. Overall, the evidence indicated that moderate use of digital technology is not intrinsically harmful and may be advantageous in a connected world. The findings inform recommendations for limiting adolescents' technology use and provide a template for conducting rigorous investigations into the relations between digital technology and children's and adolescents' health.

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Association between child and adolescent television viewing and adult health: a longitudinal birth cohort study.

Robert J. Hancox, Barry Milne, Richie Poulton (2004)

Watching television in childhood and adolescence has been linked to adverse health indicators including obesity, poor fitness, smoking, and raised cholesterol. However, there have been no longitudinal studies of childhood viewing and adult health. We explored these associations in a birth cohort followed up to age 26 years. We assessed approximately 1000 unselected individuals born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972-73 at regular intervals up to age 26 years. We used regression analysis to investigate the associations between earlier television viewing and body-mass index, cardiorespiratory fitness (maximum aerobic power assessed by a submaximal cycling test), serum cholesterol, smoking status, and blood pressure at age 26 years. Average weeknight viewing between ages 5 and 15 years was associated with higher body-mass indices (p=0.0013), lower cardiorespiratory fitness (p=0.0003), increased cigarette smoking (p<0.0001), and raised serum cholesterol (p=0.0037). Childhood and adolescent viewing had no significant association with blood pressure. These associations persisted after adjustment for potential confounding factors such as childhood socioeconomic status, body-mass index at age 5 years, parental body-mass index, parental smoking, and physical activity at age 15 years. In 26-year-olds, population-attributable fractions indicate that 17% of overweight, 15% of raised serum cholesterol, 17% of smoking, and 15% of poor fitness can be attributed to watching television for more than 2 h a day during childhood and adolescence. Television viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with overweight, poor fitness, smoking, and raised cholesterol in adulthood. Excessive viewing might have long-lasting adverse effects on health.