Scientific American: Psychology
From the Pages Activity

THE KIDS (WHO USE TECH) SEEM TO BE ALL RIGHT

A rigorous new paper uses a new scientific approach that shows the panic over teen screen time is likely overstated.

Social media is linked to depression—or not. First-person shooter video games are good for cognition—or they encourage violence. Young people are either more connected—or more isolated than ever.

Such are the conflicting messages about the effects of technology on children’s well-being. Negative findings receive far more attention and have fueled panic among parents and educators. This state of affairs reflects a heated debate among scientists. Studies showing statistically significant negative effects are followed by others revealing positive effects or none at all—sometimes using the same data set.

A new paper by scientists at the University of Oxford, published . . . in Nature Human Behaviour, should help clear up the confusion. It reveals the pitfalls of the statistical methods scientists have employed and offers a more rigorous alternative. And, importantly, it uses data on more than 350,000 adolescents to show persuasively that, at a population level, technology use has a nearly negligible effect on adolescent psychological well-being, measured in a range of questions addressing depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, prosocial behavior, peer-relationship problems and the like. Technology use tilts the needle less than half a percent away from feeling emotionally sound. For context, eating potatoes is associated with nearly the same degree of effect, and wearing glasses has a more negative impact on adolescent mental health.

“This is an incredibly important paper,” says Candice Odgers, a psychologist studying adolescent health and technology at the University of California, Irvine, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It provides a sophisticated set of analyses and is one of the most comprehensive and careful accountings of the associations between digital technologies and well-being to date. And the message from the paper is painstakingly clear: The size of the association documented across these studies is not sufficient or measurable enough to warrant the current levels of panic and fear around this issue.”

To date, most of the evidence suggesting digital technologies negatively impact young people’s psychological well-being comes from analysis of large, publicly available data sets. Those are valuable resources but susceptible to researcher bias, say Andrew Przybylski, an experimental psychologist at Oxford and his graduate student Amy Orben, coauthors of the new paper. To prove their point, they found over 600 million possible ways to analyze the data contained in the three data sets in their study. “Unfortunately, the large number of participants in these designs means that small effects are easily publishable and, if positive, garner outsized press and policy attention,” they wrote.

This type of research intends to modify the status quo. “We’re trying to move from this mind-set of cherry-picking one result to a more holistic picture of the data set,” Przybylski says. “A key part of that is being able to put these extremely miniscule effects of screens on young people in real-world context.”

That context is illuminating. Whereas their study found digital technology use was associated with 0.4 percent of the variation that disrupts adolescent well-being, the effects of smoking marijuana and bullying had much larger negative associations for mental health (at 2.7 and 4.3 respectively in one of the data sets). And some positive behaviors, such as getting enough sleep and regularly eating breakfast, were much more strongly associated with well-being than the average impact of technology use…

All of this is not to say there is no danger whatsoever in digital technology use. In a previous paper, Przybylski and colleague Netta Weinstein demonstrated a “Goldilocks” effect showing moderate use of technology—about one to two hours per day on weekdays and slightly more on weekends—was “not intrinsically harmful,” but higher levels of indulgence could be…

Lydia Denworth. Reproduced with permission. Copyright © 2019 Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

Quiz

1Which of the following statements is a reason why Przybylski and Orben conducted a study of digital technology usage on young people’s well-being?
2Rather than focusing on blank the researchers determined blank
3One of the experimental factors that has contributed to less effective outcomes by other studies of the effects of technology use on young people is:
4blank had a much greater effect on the well-being of young people when compared with blank
5In an earlier study by Przbylski and colleagues, the researchers demonstrated a “Goldilocks” effect, meaning that:
Activity Type Title

Chapter 1. Chapter 2

From the pages

false
true
 

1.1 Quiz

1.

_max_tries:1 _feedback_correct: Correct. _feedback_incorrect: Incorrect.

Which of the following statements is a reason why Przybylski and Orben conducted a study of digital technology usage on young people’s well-being?

A.
B.
C.
D.

2.

_max_tries:1 _feedback_correct: Correct. _feedback_incorrect: Incorrect.

Rather than focusing on ___________ the researchers determined _________

A.
B.
C.
D.

3.

_max_tries:1 _feedback_correct: Correct. _feedback_incorrect: Incorrect.

One of the experimental factors that has contributed to less effective outcomes by other studies of the effects of technology use on young people is:

A.
B.
C.
D.

4.

_max_tries:1 _feedback_correct: Correct. _feedback_incorrect: Incorrect.

_________________ had a much greater effect on the well-being of young people when compared with ________________

A.
B.
C.
D.

5.

_max_tries:1 _feedback_correct: Correct. _feedback_incorrect: Incorrect.

In an earlier study by Przbylski and colleagues, the researchers demonstrated a “Goldilocks” effect, meaning that:

A.
B.
C.
D.
E.