The idea that screen time is the contemporary era's curse, causing a plethora of issues from childhood obesity to mental health issues, has gained popularity.
However, there are now strong arguments that screen time for your children is not as harmful as previously believed.
It's easy to hold screens accountable for a number of society's problem, being a target because of their widespread use and our apparent reliance on them.
But recent findings indicate that some of these deeply held opinions may be exaggerated.
According to research released in 2021 by the American Psychology Association, there is insufficient proof that screen time has any major negative impact.
The 14 writers examined 33 papers that were published between 2015 and 2019 and came from different universities across the globe. They discovered a “little role in mental health concerns” for screen time, including social media, video games, and smartphones.
Additionally, a 2024 review of 11 studies from around the world found no overall evidence that screen light an hour before bed makes it harder to fall asleep, despite some studies suggesting that blue light, like that emitted by screens, makes it harder to fall asleep because it suppresses the hormone melatonin.
Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology at Bath Spa University also made a similar discovery after examining hundreds of studies on the relationship between screen usage and mental health. In his book Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time, he makes the argument that the science underlying the attention-grabbing findings is inconsistent and frequently incorrect.
He wrote: “Concrete scientific evidence to back up stories about the terrible outcomes of screen time simply isn't there.
Prof Etchells notes that a significant issue is that the majority of the statistics regarding screen time is based primarily on “self-reporting.”
To put it another way, researchers just ask young people how long they believe they spent using screens and how they remember feeling while doing so.
Additionally, he contends that there are millions of ways to analyse this vast volumes of data. “We have to be careful about looking at correlation,” he said.
Research suggests screen time boosts wellbeing and friendship
On the contrary, some evidence has found that screen time boosts wellbeing instead of causing damage.
In one study, researchers from the US and the UK examined 11,500 brain scans of children aged between nine and 12, in addition to their self-reported screen time and health evaluations.
Andrew Przybylski, a professor at Oxford University who has researched the effects of social media and video games on mental health, oversaw the 2016–2018 study.
The study showed no indication that screen usage was associated with poor mental health or cognitive problems, even among people who used screens for several hours of the day.
Prof Etchells argues: “If you think that screens do change brains for the worse, you would see that signal in a big data set like that. But you don't… so this idea that screens are changing brains in a consistently or enduringly bad way, that just doesn't seem to be the case.”
In an unexpected turn of events, a study conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that children who spent more time on screens also had more close friends.
Leading author Katie Paulich, a PhD candidate at the university's Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, stated, “These findings suggest that we should be mindful of screens, but that screen time is likely not inherently harmful to our youth.”
Need to pay close attention to the bigger picture
Doctor Amber Beynon, a research fellow at Curtin’s School of Allied Health, also challenges negative views on the impact of infant screen time.
During an interview on Curtin University’s podcast, The Future Of, Doctor Beynon said: “Some studies show that excessive screen use is associated with communication, motor skills and social development delays. However, other research says screens are associated with better language and executive function.
“Because there’s a lot of mixed research out there, we can’t just say, ‘screens are bad for kids’ – it’s much more complex than that.
“What we really need to think about – and where there’s a gap in existing research – is how screen use fits into the broader family environment. We need to take a bigger-picture approach instead of just fixating on screen time alone.”
She added that the context in which they are used is more important than screen time alone.
“When we researched the role of screens on infant development, we found some associations between screen use and poorer infant development. But what we found more consistently was that poorer parental mental health – such as increased depression and anxiety in mothers and fathers – was more consistently linked to poor child developmental outcomes.
Supporting the mental health of parents may be just as, if not more, crucial than cutting back on screen time if we wish to enhance the development outcomes for children, she argues.
Are we setting the young generation for failure by limiting screen time?
There is currently inconsistency in the official guidance.
The UK's Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health does not propose any particular time limitations for children but the World Health Organisation recommends that children under the age of one should not use screens at all, and those under the age of four should not use screens for more than an hour each day.
The stakes are tremendous in either case. It may take years for research to catch up and demonstrate if screens are actually harming children. Otherwise, we would have wasted time and effort trying to keep children away from something that was helpful.
