This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

Shared family factors, such as genes and upbringing, are likely to explain a large part of the link between high screen use and mental health problems in young people. This is according to a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in Nature Human Behaviour.

"Our results suggest that the association may in some cases have been overestimated because it has not been possible to fully account for shared family factors," says Tong Gong, research specialist at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, and the study's corresponding author alongside Lu Yi, senior researcher at the same department.

The researchers have followed more than 21,000 Swedish twins from the age of 9, through their teenage years and into adulthood. The aim was to investigate how leisure-time screen use is linked to symptoms of depression and anxiety over time.

By comparing twins within the same family, where one twin used screens more than the other, they were able to study how the association was influenced by shared genetic and environmental factors.

The clearest associations between screen use and mental health problems were observed during adolescence and for interactive screen activities such as gaming, chatting and surfing the internet. In contrast, significantly weaker or no links were observed for passive activities such as watching TV or videos.

15-year-olds who spent more than six hours a day on interactive screen activities had more symptoms of depression or anxiety and were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with such a condition later in life, compared with their peers who spent no more than two hours a day using screens.

Source link