Screen Time and Teen Mental Health
This project aims to shed more light on the association between the amount of time adolescents spend in front of digital screens (i.e., screen time) and mental health-outcomes including depression and anxiety, cognitive outcomes such as ADHD, and substance use including alcohol use and cannabis use.
In most Western societies, children and adolescents spend on average, 7 hours per day in front of a digital screen (Strasburger, 2011). Adolescents’ spare time-related screen activities, including social media use, video gaming, and television viewing (e.g., Twenge et al., 2019), is raising concerns among parents, health professionals, and educators (e.g., Kardaras, 2017). These concerns have triggered health and well-being organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), The European Academy of Paediatrics (EAP), and the European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG) to recommend limiting time on screens for youth (Radesky & Christakis, 2016). To date, many studies have linked screen time to diminished well-being in adolescence.
However, the vast majority of these studies relied on cross-sectional designs, simply tested pre-post measures designs and/or only focused on screen-time frequency, therewith neglecting screen-time content. DigiVenture aims to extend previous works by studying the association of screen time and screen-time content and adolescent well-being from a longitudinal perspective.
