Promoting healthy digital device usage: recommendations for youth and parents

Abstract

Young people’s usage of digital devices is currently a central topic of interest for researchers, clinicians and the general public, particularly with regards to the impact of social media on adolescents’ mental health. Notably, the duration of screen time is not the primary determinant of mental health outcomes1,2. Rather, the “quality” of an individual’s device usage patterns, experiences and interactions online, and how they correlate with other lifestyle variables (e.g., sedentary time and sleep) appears to matter most1,3,4.
Other than avoiding the more clear-cut “online harms” (e.g., addictive behaviours, cyberbullying, and online blackmail or exploitation), there is a lack of consensus on how youth can improve the “quality” of their online time. This is in part because the details of what constitutes “healthy” device usage are unclear, and likely differ with regards to sociodemographic factors1. Here we sought to produce a simplified set of recommended actions to promote adolescents’ healthy digital device usage.
We assembled a multidisciplinary team of individuals with expertise across child and adolescent mental health, social media research, behaviour change interventions, and public health. We then identified and reviewed recently published guideline/recommendation articles, online resources and reports from independent think tanks – particularly those that included feedback from young people themselves. We checked these resources for directly actionable advice, rather than general principles on healthy usage patterns. We then considered the recommended actions from such documents alongside the underlying scientific evidence and the team’s experience, in order to put forward the top three tips for healthy device usage in adolescents. We also produced a further set of recommendations for parents who wish to implement such changes in their family units.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Samuele Cortese: orcid.org/0000-0001-5877-8075

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