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An analysis of data from the Growing Up in Scotland study found that, after accounting for family circumstances, the amount of time children spent on screens was not linked to emotional, behavioral, or social difficulties at ages 5 and 10. At age 15, teens who spent 5 or more hours a day gaming were more likely to have elevated difficulties than those who gamed less than an hour a day, while those who spent at least an hour a day on social media and messaging were less likely to. The paper was published in JAMA Network Open.
Screen-based devices such as televisions, smartphones, computers, and tablets have become a routine part of childhood in many countries. In the United Kingdom, 85% of children aged 3 to 5 go online, a figure that reaches 100% by age 10, and 81% of children aged 10 to 12 use social media and messaging apps despite age limits of 13. This widespread exposure has prompted concern about whether large amounts of screen use might harm children’s emotional, social, and behavioral development.
However, research findings have been mixed, and there is still considerable debate about how large any harmful effects actually are. Some of the inconsistencies reflect differences in the type of screen activity, the amount of time spent using devices, and the age of the child.
Younger children may be especially sensitive if screen use replaces play, conversation, or interaction with parents and caregivers. Among adolescents, the picture is less clear because screen use takes place alongside major biological, social, and emotional changes. Many existing studies are also limited because they examine children at only one point in time and do not adequately account for other influences on development.
Study author Fiona McQuaid of the University of Edinburgh and her colleagues examined how screen use related to children’s psychosocial development, both at the same point in time and years later. A key aim was to account for family factors, such as the quality of the parent-child relationship, that earlier studies have often left out.
They analyzed data from the Growing Up in Scotland study, a government-funded study administered by the Scottish Centre for Social Research. Families with 10-month-old infants living in Scotland in 2005 and 2006 were identified from child benefit records, which cover more than 90% of Scottish children, and were followed up at regular intervals with interviews, questionnaires, cognitive tests, and physical measurements. In 2017, the study recruited 502 additional adolescents to make up for the loss of participants from the most deprived areas; they were included in the analyses at age 15 but not in the analyses that tracked children over time.
The analysis included 3,786 children at age 5, 3,126 at age 10, and 2,598 at age 15, with roughly equal numbers of boys and girls. Data were collected in 2009 and 2010, 2014 and 2015, and 2019 and 2020.
Out-of-school screen use was reported by the child’s main caregiver at ages 5 and 10 and by the adolescents themselves at 15. At ages 5 and 10, time spent watching television and using computers or playing games was combined into a daily total, while at 15, time spent on television and films, gaming, and social media and messaging was analyzed separately. The study captured only how much time was spent, not what children were watching or doing.
Parents completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at each age, a widely used screening tool that covers emotional difficulties, conduct problems, hyperactivity, and problems with peers, along with prosocial behavior such as being kind and helpful. Children with a total difficulties score of 14 or more were classified as having above-average difficulties. The researchers adjusted for a wide range of factors, including household income, deprivation, parental education and health, children’s cognitive test scores, household chaos, and the warmth and conflict in the parent-child relationship.
About 11% of children had above-average difficulties at age 5, and about 12% did at ages 10 and 15. Daily screen use increased substantially with age. The share of children using screens for 3 or more hours a day rose from 25% at age 5 to 52% at age 10, and the share gaming for 3 or more hours a day rose from 1.7% at age 5 to about 21% at age 15. At 15, 28% of teens used social media and messaging apps for 3 or more hours a day.
After the researchers accounted for family and other factors, total screen time was not linked to above-average difficulties at ages 5 or 10. Associations seen before these adjustments largely weakened once they were taken into account.
At age 15, teens who gamed for 5 or more hours a day had 2.61 times the odds of above-average difficulties compared with those who gamed for less than an hour. By contrast, teens who used social media and messaging apps for at least an hour a day had about 40% lower odds of above-average difficulties than those who used them for less than an hour, though after the researchers corrected for running many comparisons at once, this held only for 1 to 2 hours a day.
The authors urged caution in interpreting the social media finding. Teens who use social media very little may differ from their peers in ways that affect their well-being, and those who are already doing well socially may simply be more inclined to use these apps.
Looking over time, children who used screens for 5 or more hours a day at age 5 had 2.68 times the odds of above-average difficulties at age 10 compared with those who used screens for less than an hour, but this association was no longer present at age 15. It also did not hold up in several alternative analyses, and only 119 children were in the highest-use group. Prosocial behavior showed no consistent links with screen use.
“In this cohort study, screen use was not consistently associated with poorer outcomes for children. These findings suggest that guidelines focusing solely on screen time may have limited impact on psychosocial outcomes,” study authors concluded.
The authors suggest that guidance should also consider the content of screen use, the context in which it happens, and parental involvement, rather than time limits alone. They note that screen use also carries known risks, including sedentary behavior, online bullying, and exposure to harmful content.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the relationship between screen use and children’s psychosocial development. However, it should be noted that the design of this study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results, and the links seen at age 15 could run in either direction. The study also measured only time spent on screens, not content, and screen use was reported by parents at younger ages but by adolescents at 15, while difficulties were rated by parents throughout.
Families from deprived areas, younger mothers, and single-parent households were more likely to drop out over time, and few participants were from ethnic minority backgrounds, which may limit how widely the findings apply. Most of the data were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic and before newer formats such as short-form video became widespread, so they may not fully reflect children’s current digital lives.
The paper, “Screen Use and Emotional, Behavioral, and Social Development in Children,” was authored by Fiona McQuaid, Valeria Skafida, Ruth McQuillan, and Bohee Lee.