Screen Time Linked To Poor Sleep, Depression Among Teen Girls

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

Teenagers who spend more time on screens tend to get worse sleep, both in terms of sleep quality and duration, researchers reported in the journal PLOS Global Public Health.

Screen time also caused teens to put off sleep until later hours, affecting their wake/sleep cycles, researchers found.

These sleep disturbances are linked to later depression symptoms in girls but not in boys, results show.

“We found that adolescents who reported longer screen times also developed poorer sleep habits over time,” concluded the research team led by Sebastian Hökby, a doctoral student at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “In turn, this led to increased depression levels, especially among girls.”

For the study, researchers tracked more than 4,800 Swedish students between 12 and 16 years of age, collecting data on sleep, depression symptoms, and screen time at three different points during the course of a year.

Depression symptoms among girls were more than twice those of boys, a gender difference that’s been found in earlier studies, researchers reported.

Results also showed that 38% to 57% of girls’ depression symptoms could be explained by changes in sleep patterns driven by screen use.

Boys who spent more time on screens also experienced sleep disruptions, but these were not significantly linked to later depression symptoms.

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/mental-health/screen-time-linked-to-poor-sleep-depression-among-teen-girls