Does screen time affect children?

By A.J.

WORRIES ABOUT screen time are increasingly common. Parents (and some health professionals) fret that young people who bask, zombie-like, in the cold glow of television, computer and mobile-phone screens could be storing up a range of social, physical, mental and cognitive problems for their future selves. Children are certainly spending a growing chunk of time looking at screens. Figures from Britain’s Office of National Statistics show, for example, that in 2010-11 8.6% of children aged under 16 said they spent more than three hours on social networks on a normal school day; by 2015-16 that figure had risen to 12.8%. At the same time, according to the National Health Service, the proportion of children aged 5-15 with mental disorders rose from 9.7% in 1999 to 11.2% in 2017. Are these sets of numbers linked?

In short: nobody knows. The limited evidence available suggests that the negative effects of screen time on mental health are tiny and not worth worrying about. But solid research is lacking. Ask any scientist if screen time has alarming effects on children and he will invariably ask in return: what do you mean by “screen time”? It could refer to anything from doing homework on an iPad and reading books on a Kindle to watching television and playing video games. Investigating the effects of screen time is like trying to measure the effects of food on people’s waistlines—it depends on the kind of food they eat, how often, and external factors such as exercise.