Current Affairs!

Not the normal message… https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/screen-time-mental-health-wellbeing-vegetables-potatoes-science-health-oxford-university-a8727691.html

Looking a bit deeper… ‘Using phone, tablets and laptops is no worse for teenagers’ mental health than eating more potatoes, a new scientific study has claimed. Researchers from the University of Oxford examined data on more than 300,000 adolescents in both America and the UK to ascertain what impact various factors had on wellbeing.’

Why was this study different? There was a lot of misinformation and badly explained research about children’s use of technology previously. Previous researchers who have looked at the question of technology and mental health had allowed their own biases to drive their findings. “Of the three datasets we analysed for this study, we found over 600 million possible ways to analyse the data. We calculated a large sample of these and found that – if you wanted – you could come up with a large range of positive or negative associations between technology and wellbeing, or no effect at all.” 

This supports finding from earlier this month: Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) reviewed the evidence on screen time and concluded there was not enough to show that it was inherently harmful. Or that any link was causal.

In criticism of the new information, some of the data used was from 2007 and didn’t mention social media, making the findings difficult to link to adolescents in 2019.

What is more important? “Our findings demonstrate that screen use itself has at most a tiny association with youth mental health,” lead researcher, Professor Andrew Przybylski, said. Just 0.4 per cent of adolescent wellbeing could be associated with technology use. Activities including getting enough sleep and eating breakfast had much stronger impacts on mental health.

What had a worse effect? Lack of sleep Poor eating habits Being bullied was 4.3 times more harmful. Smoking cannabis was 2.7 times more detrimental than screen time.

How much time do you spend on your phone? This is use per week, averaging around 2 hours a day. Other sources have given values of over 5 hours a day.

Are you actually interacting with others?

Are you sleeping well? Each notification gives a small burst of dopamine. The actually screen interrupts melatonin and will affect the sleep cycle.

What about cyber bullying?

What’s the message? Read deeper into where ‘facts’ and headlines come from. Reflect on your screen time, ask yourself whether you are: Still in control of it Impacting on your relationships Able to sleep

Tutorial worship Use the link below to discuss the reality of how much time students are spending on their phones. Also discuss the other problems with too much technology use. What can they put in place? For 9, 10, 11, how does technology influence their revision, positively and negatively? What apps can we use to help? https://freedom.to/blog/5-signs-youre-spending-too-much-time-on-your-phone-and-what-to-do-about-it/