Przybylski and Weinstein’s study—based on data collected from a representative sample of 19,957 parents who reported on their children’s levels of attachment, resilience (or bouncing back quickly from adversity), curiosity, and positive affect—found that young people who engaged in less than the AAP’s recommended limits showed “slightly higher levels of resilience but lower levels of positive affect compared to those who did not.” These differences became insignificant once the authors considered contextual factors like ethnicity, household income, and caregiver’s education level. Surprisingly, they also found “extremely small positive effects” that correlated with digital engagement at a level much higher (“up to 7/hr for both television and computer-based media”) than what’s commonly considered healthy.
That’s not all: A new study in Nature Human Behaviour, which looked at data from more than 350,000 adolescents, also found that digital tech use mattered little to kids’ well-being. The authors, Amy Orben and Przybylski, argue that prior research, which examined the impact of social media on teens and tweens, was based on weak correlations and insufficiently comprehensive methods, and therefore drew false conclusions. When they analyzed the same data, they found that “the association of well-being with regularly eating potatoes was nearly as negative as the association with technology use, and wearing glasses was more negatively associated with well-being.” To put a number on it: Digital tech use explains about 0.4 percent of the variation in well-being, the researchers write. “Taking the broader context of the data into account suggests that these effects are too small to warrant policy change.”
These results don’t suggest we should stop thinking about how to best raise kids to thrive in a connected world. Instead, it suggests we find a different, more useful way of discussing screen media. People usually talk about kids and technology from a medical perspective. We ask: Is it healthy or unhealthy? Even psychologists tend to use a diagnostic approach: Does social media exposure lead to anxiety or depression? Narcissism? Loneliness? Feelings of isolation?