MediaSmarts research suggests that a worrying number of youth spend worrying amounts of time using screen devices: by age 14 almost half of Canadian children use a screen device after they’ve gone to bed most nights, and more than three-quarters do so at least occasionally.[1] While research suggests that we should be cautious, it has also shown that what our kids do with these devices is at least as important as how much time they spend doing it.  Most importantly, the message we send with our own behaviour speaks as loudly as anything we say.

Screen use can be positive or negative

While very high levels of screen time are connected to poor mental well-being, very low levels of it are as well, and there is also a large range of time where there’s no direct connection to well-being.[2]

Most research, though, has found that screen time is less important than screen use, and that “digital technology can have both positive and negative effects on child well-being, depending on the activity and how much time is spent.”[3] As well, different screen activities can have positive or negative impacts on different children, or even on the same child at different ages or times in their life.

How screen use can hurt mental wellness

The clearest way that screen time can harm mental wellness is through its impact on sleep. A significant number of teens use digital devices in their rooms after they’ve gone to bed, and are often awakened by texts and notifications.[4] This means both less sleep and worse sleep, both of which can have negative consequences on general mental wellness and brain development.[5]

There’s also some evidence that screen use can make it harder for kids to manage their emotions, partly because digital communication doesn’t deliver emotional cues and partly because teens sometimes use digital media to escape emotionally uncomfortable situations.[6]

Screen use is most likely to cause problems when it meets a need that we aren’t getting elsewhere, or one that is easier to get through digital devices. One of the more common problems associated with smartphones, for example, is anxiety caused by not wanting to miss what your friends might be doing or talking about on social media (sometimes called FOMO, or  Fear of Missing Out.) What these teens really want is the connection to their friends, and the sense of being a part of their lives that social media delivers.[7] In this way a smartphone is not that different from the phones many of us spent hours on when we were teenagers, but there are some important differences: social networks are a “party line” where messages from any of your friends could come at any time. When kids have problems with video games, it’s usually because the games are providing something – friendship, a feeling of mastery and achievement – that they can’t get, or can’t get as easily in other parts of their lives.

Screen use and vulnerable children

The negative effects of screen use are more powerful on vulnerable children – but so are the positive ones. Teens who report having low mental well-being are more likely to say that they feel bad if nobody likes or comments on their posts, to say they’ve felt left out after seeing friends’ posts, and in general to have had negative experiences on social media. These same teens, though, are more likely to say that social media has an overall positive impact on them, to say that it makes them feel better about themselves, and to say that it makes them less lonely.[8]

Social media and gaming can be a lifeline for vulnerable youth, but these can have an outsized negative impact on them as well. As with other parts of their lives, parents of vulnerable youth need to be closely involved in their kids’ digital lives and make sure that they’re supporting the positive aspects while helping to handle the negative ones.

What youth say about screen time

Studies that have asked young people how they feel about screen use have generally found it has more positive than negative impacts on them. Some of the benefits they discuss include making them feel less lonely[9], helping them make new friends and/or keep in touch with friends and family[10], and letting them connect with support and health services.[11]

However, teens often say that screen use can have negative effects as well – especially on other teens[12] and on their parents.[13] Many teens have taken at least some steps to manage their screen use, such as trying to limit how much time they spend on social media or playing video games.[14]

While young people often recognize that they have problems managing their screen use, many feel that they get conflicting messages from their parents’ screen use: 51% of teens say their parents are sometimes distracted by their phones when talking to them.[15] When kids were asked what screen time rules parents should follow, they said: “Put down the phone when your child is trying to say something important,” “Don’t spend all your free time on this stuff” and “Practice what you preach.”[16]