Excessive screen use makes children increasingly reliant on them.

Understanding the exact problems that screens cause in children and adolescents is one of today’s pressing scientific questions. There is data indicating emotional problems in young people, and it’s evident that one of the significant developments in the last decade has been mobile phones. However, scientists disagree on whether screens are the cause of these emotional issues. A new scientific article analyzing nearly 300,000 children across 117 studies believes it has found a more solid answer: “What gives us more confidence is that we analyzed studies that followed the same children over time, not just at specific moments,” says Roberta Pires Vasconcellos, a researcher at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) and co-author of the study published in the journal American Psychological Association.

The study confirmed that those who use more screens at age 5 have more problems by age 7. “It’s stronger evidence than simply noticing that those who use more screens now have problems; there are a lot of data pointing in the same direction,” explains Pires Vasconcellos.

The research focuses only on children under 10, as there are already similar studies in adolescents. “This is the stage when the foundations of emotional health are built. It’s like learning to read: if you struggle at first, it affects everything else,” says Pires Vasconcellos, who also confirms that these issues continue to grow with age and that the effects strengthen over time.

One of the most striking results of the study is that increased screen time in children leads them to need screens even more. A vicious cycle emerges: “Children with problems may be more likely to use screens (to cover unsatisfied emotional needs),” the authors write in the study. “And children who excessively use screens may be more prone to having those unsatisfied needs (for example, because they engage less in school, with family, or with friends).”

Anxiety, sadness, low self-esteem

The aim of the study is to detect what they call “socio-emotional problems,” which are the difficulties children have in managing their emotions and behavior, such as anxiety, feeling sad, or having low self-esteem. Behaviorally, this might manifest as aggression, problems concentrating, or frequently breaking rules.

Such behavior occurs when children struggle to manage what they feel or get along with others. The authors believe excessive screen use is often a “symptom” of these problems rather than their cause: “If your child is glued to a tablet, they might be trying to cope with anxiety or feeling lonely,” says Pires Vasconcellos. “Taking away the iPad won’t solve it; we need to ask why they are so attached to the screen and help them find better ways to cope with their feelings. It’s like treating a fever without questioning what infection is causing it. Just setting a timer isn’t enough,” she adds.

By analyzing children under 10, the study does not specifically address two of the major presumed culprits of problems in adolescents: social media and mobile phones. The legal age for using social media is typically 13, and mobile phones usually come into play starting at 12. Although many families bypass these limits, it’s challenging to find extensive use among children under 10. “Our data suggest that mobile phones worsen the situation because the effects were stronger in studies from 2012 to 2020, just when they began to be used massively. And since the pandemic, we’ve seen many children with emotional problems turning even more to screens. But the truth is we found similar issues and patterns across all devices: TV, computers, tablets,” says the scientist.

Video games, a culprit

Before age 10, the study indicates that the problem is more related to video games than social media: “What matters is not so much what screen they use, but what they do when they are in front of it. Gaming was clearly what caught our attention the most. Children who play video games are much more likely to develop emotional problems. We could not study social media thoroughly because, in theory, they are for those over 13, although we know that many younger children use them in secret,” says the researcher.

This dominance of video games over social media at that age partly creates an imbalance in the impact by gender. “It’s complex,” says Pires Vasconcellos. “In general, girls who use screens a lot showed slightly more emotional problems than boys. But when we look at the older ones, between 8 and 10 years, boys appear more vulnerable, especially with video games. Boys of that age who already have emotional problems tend to retreat into screens, and that ends up worsening things,” she adds.