📱 No link between screen time and mental health problems for kids

📱 No link between screen time and mental health problems for kids

Several new studies come to the same conclusion. There is no evidence that anxiety, depression and other mental health problems are caused by screen time.

Mathias Sundin
Mathias Sundin

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Amy Orben, a researcher at Cambridge University, has gone through 80 systematic reviews and meta-analyses on this topic, and says there is no scientific proof that screen time causes mental health problems.

Two professors, Candice Odgers and Michaeline Jensen, of the University of North Carolina, comes to a similar conclusion based on their analysis of 40 other research papers and reviews.

Also, Jeff Hancock, the founder of the Stanford Social Media Lab, come to the same conclusion after looking into 226 studies on the topic.

“The current dominant discourse around phones and well-being is a lot of hype and a lot of fear,” Mr. Hancock said.

“Many of the people who are terrifying kids about screens, they have hit a vein of attention from society and they are going to ride that. But that is super bad for society,” said Andrew Przybylski, the director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, who has published several studies on the topic, reports the New York Times.

Let us now bury the word screen time. It has no meaning. It's not the screen that is the issue, but what you do on it. You can do stuff that is bad for you, or stuff that is good for you, it has nothing to do with the screen.

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