Youth who participated in a two-week family intervention to reduce time spent on smartphones and other screen media showed improved behaviors relative to youth that did not participate, reports a study published today in JAMA Network Open.
While acknowledging that “more research is needed to confirm whether these effects are sustainable in the long term,” the study authors noted that this clinical trial data provides a causal link between a reduction in screen time and improvements in psychological symptoms.
Jesper Schmidt-Persson, Ph.D., of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, and colleagues examined data from 89 families (181 total children) with moderate to high screen-time use who participated in a family-based intervention study. Forty-five of the families were asked to hand over all smartphones and tablets for two weeks and reduce their leisure use of other screen devices such as televisions to three hours per week or less. These families were given non-smartphones to stay in touch and were allowed 30 minutes of screen time per day for necessary activities like making appointments. The remaining families were asked to maintain and log their normal screen usage.
All parents reported on their children’s behaviors such as conduct, hyperactivity, and sociality using the 25-item Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)—one week before the trial started and then immediately after (21 days apart).
At the follow-up assessment, the families that were part of the screen-reduction intervention reported significantly greater reductions in their SDQ total difficulties score compared with the non-intervention families (1.67 points lower); the greatest improvements were seen for emotional symptoms and peer-relationship problems. Children who participated in the intervention also showed more prosocial behaviors at the end of the study.
“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,” Henning Tiemeier, M.D., Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote in an accompanying commentary. Tiemeier added that the field of developmental health needs more such clinical trials to examine whether short-term “digital detoxification” strategies can be supported by evidence.
For related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Remember Books? Researcher Shows How Reading Is Superior to Screen Time.”
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