Just like alcohol and tobacco use, screen time can become an addiction that can damage your health and relationships if it’s not kept it check. Screen addiction is a group of behaviors that are negative, some negative outcomes, that can happen when we use too much technology during our day. Prolonged use of watching TV, video games, scrolling through social media – all of that use acts like a digital drug for our brain.
Part of the concern around being constantly connected through technology and media revolves around how we multitask among different forms of media and between media and real life. Media multitasking is very common among children and adults, even though there is ongoing concern over how it affects our abilities to pay attention and avoid distraction. A study of 8- to 18-year-olds found that young people were engaging in media multitasking for 29 percent of their overall media use, fitting over 10 hours of media use into 7.5 hours of their days . Another study of 263 middle school, high school, and university students found that students studied for fewer than six minutes before switching to another technological distraction, such as texting or social media.
Research shows that excessive gaming spending two-thirds or more of free time is correlated with negative mental health outcomes, including higher incidence of anxiety, depression and substance use.There is evidence that multitasking using social media, texting, watching tv while doing homework undermines cognitive functioning and decreases learning.And, of course, experts note constant attention to devices comes at the cost of other activities that are ultimately more valuable, and developmentally important. parents should be alert for potential negative fallout from screen use. Apps and games are designed to keep us engaged as much as possible, and it can be hard for children to exercise self-control when their impulse is to keep scrolling.
