Health Wanted Show Notes: Screen Time and Mental Health
Each year, Oxford University Press chooses a “word of the year.”
In 2024, they chose “brain rot.” The selection signals the public’s growing concern with the way mindless consumption of material (now mostly online) that is considered to be trivial or unchallenging impacts the preservation of our minds.
The fight against a passive existence of observing the lives, accomplishments, and goals of others, rather than focusing on or seeking our own, is a timeless battle.
The first recorded use of brain rot can be found in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden, where Thoreau writes, "while England endeavors to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"
Well over a century later, we are still trying to figure out how obsessing over the lives of strangers or consuming unchallenging fluff through the ever-present screens in our lives impacts our emotional wellbeing.
Just as social strife in the 1960s was often attributed to TV ( prompting the surgeon general to release an advisory on TV violence in 1972), or social strife in the 1990s was attributed to video games, we are currently questioning if today’s social strife can be attributed to screen time.
What exactly is screen time?
While it might seem like the obvious answer is “time looking at a screen,” the cognitive resources required to scroll on Instagram reels for six hours straight are going to be different than those required to play a complex puzzle game on your Nintendo Switch.
Let’s start with the screens themselves. Much fuss has been made about the blue light that phones emit. The idea is that this wavelength of light (which we get from sunlight, too) tricks the brain into thinking it’s still daylight.
So, in theory, looking at your phone before bed can mess up your body’s ability to wind down.
A couple ofvery small studies found that people who used smartphones that emit blue light before bed took slightly longer to feel sleepy compared to people using phones with blue light blockers. One study found no real significant change in their levels of melatonin (the sleepy hormone) or cortisol (the wakey hormone) and the other study did.
According to another review of available evidence, there’s not a lot to support the idea that blue light is what's messing up your sleep. It’s more likely what you are looking at.
Is social media harmful to our health?
Many government officials think so, particularly when it comes to kids.
Just last year, Australia approved a ban on social media accounts for kids under 16, and in 2023 the Surgeon General of the United States released an advisory on social media and youth mental health.
Teddy Roosevelt is credited with the phrase “comparison is the thief of joy,” and boy does social media allow for a lot of comparison.
Study after study after study has shown a link between adolescent social media use and poor self-image.
There has been an alarming rise in body image disorders requiring emergency room visits or inpatient treatment among youth in recent years.
A study measured the rates of medically attended eating disorders by comparing pre-pandemic rates to rates occurring within the first year after onset of the pandemic…a time when our social media use greatly
And this isn’t limited to just girls (though they do make up the majority). More and more boys and men are suffering from what’s known as “muscle dysmorphia” born from the idea that they aren’t “big enough” and fueled by social media accounts of professional bodybuilders.
The opportunity for constant comparison could be keeping teens up at night.
One survey of adolescent media use found that 1 in 3 teens reported using screens (mostly for social media) until midnight or later on the weekdays.
Screens might be messing with our attention spans, but we need more research.
Studies have shown that constant switching (rather generously referred to as multitasking in this context) between sources of media is having an impact on our ability to focus.
What about the impact that screens have on our (and children’s) attention spans? What if they’re just looking at one screen (like TV or video games) at a time?
One study in young mice found that exposure to 6 hours of sound and light (similar to video games) caused a significant “rewiring” of the brain.
While the stimulation meant the mice displayed the ability to stay calm in situations that stressed out non-screentime mice , they also displayed symptoms of attention deficit and risky behavior (they were really into the cocaine the researchers gave them. Seriously).
Additional mouse models have corroborated this: the more audiovisual stimulation baby mice get, the worse their attention is as they grow old.
What we need are robust studies in humans, particularly children and adolescents, which is easier said than done. Most studies in humans (children in particular) are observational, which means it’s difficult to figure out if issues with attention or reward seeking are caused by too much screen time or just correlated with it.
Many other factors can contribute to cognitive developmental problems, like parental style, poverty, or stress.
The media coverage about the dangers of screen time can also make it harder to conduct studies to determine how dangerous screen time really is.
Similarly, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a big enough group of parents who’d be able to function with a rule of “zero screen time.”
The lack of control when it comes to designing studies on screentime and kids, muddies the waters of results, and means that recommendations around screen time can’t be one-size-fits-all.
But the internet isn’t all bad!
After all, it’s allowed more people more access to information to learn new skills, study a new subject, improve communication, build hand dexterity through texting and gaming, and more.
Social media in particular can be a place for people in marginalized groups to find community and representation.
Certain kinds of screen time might also contribute to improved cognitive function.
In one study, scans of the brains of teens who played several hours of video games a week showed they had larger areas of the brain related to reward processing and executive control - indicating improved reasoning and response.
Though it’s impossible to say from this study if video games increase these areas of the brain, or if people who already have these traits are more likely to be drawn to video game play.
Like so many things in health research, it’s not as easy as saying “do this” or “don’t do that.” Getting accurate data on the impacts of screen time is hard, and explanations of existing research requires context and nuance.
When it comes to screen time, especially with kids, I think instead of asking “how much is too much” we should be asking “what are we using it for?”
Kids need physical activity, real life social connections, and in-person play with other kids.
Setting screen time boundaries is a good idea. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recognizes that screens aren’t going anywhere, and instead suggests ways in which to limit or direct screen time based on a child’s age and the type of content they consume.
They suggest doing things like:
Limiting screen time for kids under 24 months to educational content they watch with a caregiver.
Not watching screens during mealtimes
Removing screens from bedrooms 30-60 minutes before bed.
It’s important to have conversations with older kids about setting limits everyone can agree on and making sure adults in the family follow them too.
If you worry you might miss out on all the fun if you take the occasional break from social media, know that studies have shown while there is an adjustment period… people ultimately feel better taking a break.
