Short-Term Screen Time Reduction Improves Mental Health in Children and Adolescents

TOPLINE:

Reducing screen time for entire families — parents, children, and adolescents — over a 2-week period can improve the mental health of children and adolescents, notably by mitigating issues related to internalizing behavior and by promoting prosocial behavior.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial including 89 families (181 children and adolescents) from 10 municipalities in Denmark.

• Of these, 45 families reduced their screen time for leisure to less than 3 hours per week for 2 weeks (86 children; mean age, 8.6 years; 49% girls) and 44 families maintained their usual screen habits (95 children; mean age, 9.5 years; 60% girls).

• The children and at least one adult member of the families that reduced their screen time had to hand over their smartphones and tablets for 2 weeks. To ensure compliance, television monitors were installed in their homes.

• The main outcome was the between-group difference in the change in total behavioral difficulties, measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire.

TAKEAWAY:

• The total difficulties score was lower among the participants who reduced their use of screen media vs those who maintained their usual screen habits (mean difference, −1.67 points; 95% CI, −2.68 to −0.67).

• Internalizing, defined as emotional symptoms and peer problems, showed the greatest improvement in those with reduced screen time, with a mean difference of −1.03 points (95% CI, −1.76 to −0.29).

• Prosocial behavior also improved significantly, with a mean difference of 0.84 points (95% CI, 0.39-1.30).

IN PRACTICE:

In an invited commentary, Henning Tiemeier, MD, PhD, of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston, wrote, "What is so novel about this intervention is that it does not recommend a lasting reduction of screen time to some arbitrary guideline level, but it examines a radical short-term break. This intervention could possibly be repeated, constituting an intermittent break strategy."

LIMITATIONS:

The open-label nature of the study may have introduced bias in the assessment of behavioral strengths and difficulties. The short-term follow-up of 2 weeks limits the generalizability of the results to long-term effects. The study sample may represent a subgroup with particularly high motivation to reduce the use of screen media, influencing the generalizability of the findings.

DISCLOSURES:

The SCREENS study was supported by the European Research Council. One of the authors was supported by the UK Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health and Care Research Biomedical Research Centre in Cambridge, England. Another author declared receiving grants from various sources.

Note: This article originally appeared on Medscape.