The U.S. Surgeon General in May published an advisory about the harms of screen use for children and adolescents as well as actions families, schools and policymakers can take to protect them.
Young people today spend key developmental years surrounded by screens on televisions, computers, tablets, smartphones and other devices.
“While screen use can have some benefits, the evidence of a range of risks to children’s overall mental and physical health is mounting,” U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote in the advisory. “These negative outcomes are related to harmful use, including use by children with vulnerable medical conditions, along with the ubiquity of devices and features deliberately built into many tech platforms to promote ‘engagement,’ a positive sounding word that, for too many young people, is a path to addiction-like behavior.”
The emerging public health concern can adversely impact sleep, academic performance, physical activity and health, in-person relationships and performance of daily responsibilities. Children may experience harm when they lose control over their use. A few warning signs of this compulsive behavior include repeatedly asking to use screens, spending too much time on them, using screen time to feel better, hiding or lying about use, being defensive of their actions, displaying symptoms of emotional withdrawal and not engaging with others in-person.
Screen time, which typically increases with age, allows young people to view and engage with a range of content including shows, movies, short-form videos, games, texting, shopping, social media and artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. “Nearly 50 percent of adolescents admit they lose track of the amount of time they spend on their phone,” according to the report.
While toddlers average roughly two hours spent using media on a daily basis, pre-teens and teens average upwards of four or more hours.
Specifically, the report states that screen use is most likely to cause harm when content is designed to increase use, promotes risky behaviors, facilitates unwanted contact by strangers, occurs on platforms that track and collect user data, and/or uses deceptive patterns that trick users into unintended actions such as purchases or seeing “unsuitable” things.
Screens’ impact on education
Related to academics, higher levels of some kinds of recreational screen time have led to lower grades and test scores.
In classrooms, “multitasking with digital media interfered with attention and concentration and negatively affected grades, test scores, recall, and reading,” the report explains. “Digital media multitasking has also been associated with reduced learning efficiency during studying.”
Among preschool-aged students, research has shown that more time on screens can cause poorer performance on developmental screening measures like communication. In general, it has also been associated with lower achievement in foundational subjects including math and reading.
Additionally, “ninth and tenth grade students who are frequent users of social media are less likely to report receiving mostly As and Bs in high school classes compared to students with low levels of social media use,” the report states.
Research
Key research findings detailed in the report include:
- Early exposure to screens has developmental and cognitive risks. Use of screens in early life has been linked to poorer language outcomes.
- In school-aged children, excessive screen time has been linked to poor educational and health outcomes.
- For teens, higher levels of screen time are associated with mental health and behavioral concerns — especially related to social media use.
- Potential disruptions to healthy sleep are worrisome and can hinder learning, mood, behavior and other important aspects of young people’s lives and development.
The long-term effects of the online exploitation of children (between 3.5 to 5 percent of experience sextortion before adulthood), gambling-like features in games and other platforms, and use of AI and chatbots are among developing areas of concern.
The report notes that some screen time interventions are showing promise.
“Emerging evidence suggests that limiting screen time in early childhood may support healthier developmental and sleep outcomes, especially when reduction efforts involve parents and are reinforced over time,” the advisory states. “In older children, bell-to-bell phone restrictions may reduce classroom distraction and improve academic outcomes for some students, while broader screen-time reduction in older children may be associated with improvements in sleep and physical activity outcomes.”
Recommended actions
To combat the negative effects of screen use, the advisory suggests implementing evidence-based tools and strategies in accordance with “the 5 Ds” — discuss, do, delay, divert and disconnect.
Discussing involves setting expectations around healthy screen use and “do” entails adults modeling that behavior themselves. Delaying addresses both delaying screen time as long as possible and having age-appropriate limits, while diversion provides alternatives to screen time, redirects children’s attention to healthy activities and prioritizes “completion of desirable activities first, such as chores, homework, music, or sports before screen use.” To disconnect, scheduled, screen-free time should be a regular occurrence.
For schools, recommendations include having bell-to-bell ban policies — eliminating or limiting multitasking during the school day; teaching digital citizenship and literacy skills; and creating chances to displace screen time.
