Study: Spending Too Much Time On Screens Do Not Have Adverse Effect On Kids

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A recent study suggests that there are chances that your children will turn out well even if they spend hours playing video games or watching television. The lead author of the study, Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University in the United States, found that there is only a negligibly relationship between excessive screen time and higher levels of depression and delinquency among teenagers.

Ferguson and his colleagues believe that the strict attention to limited screen time by policy makers and advocacy groups is not necessary. Prior to the fall of last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended just two hours/day screen time for youth, but later relinquish the recommendation in its new guidelines.

The recent change is reflective of the fact that screen time recommendations is usually best guesses, but data on the use of such recommendations are not always conclusive. With regards to this, the researchers decided to address the lacunas in previous findings by analyzing the levels of screen time that causes negative impacts on teenagers and how strong they are, Esciencenews.

They examined data from a youth risk behavior survey conducted in 2013, which included data from study participants at Florida with an average age of 16 years old. The survey inquired from the participants about their physical activity, sleeping patterns, how often they had meals with their family, how much screen time they spent watching television and playing video games and whether they experienced any symptoms of depression.

The participants were also asked about their grades, if they engaged in delinquent behavior, risky driving, engaged in sexual activities, used illegal substances or suffered any eating disorders. The researchers found that children are resilient to screen consumption for up to six hours daily and the negative effects noted where at a minimal level which generally affected males more.

They also discovered that the period of time spent in front of a screen only accounted for between 0.49 percent of the variance in delinquency, 1.7 percent in depressive symptoms and 1.2 percent in average grade points. However, It did not impact on risky driving or sex activities, substance abuse or restrictive eating.

The researchers report that setting strict time limits on screen use is a fraught avenue for policy and can lead to fostering guilt in parents that are not able to fulfill the unrealistic expectations of their children. They believe that there is more value in placing more focus on how media are used rather than on the time consumption alone, because it could foster learning and socialization, according to Science Daily.

They also believes that it is crucial that children are allowed to become intimately familiar with screen technologies as screens of various sorts are increasingly embedded into daily life, whether they involve education, work, socialization or personal organization. Setting strict limits on screen use may lead to a child not keeping up with the various ways in which screens have become essential to modern life. The researchers published the findings of their study in Springer's journal Psychiatric Quarterly.