STOCKHOLM: Teenage girls who spend excessive time on smartphones and other digital devices may be at greater risk of poor sleep and increased symptoms of depression, according to a new Swedish study.
Teenagers who spend more time using screens have worse sleep, researchers wrote in the PLOS Global Public Health journal on Wednesday.
Researchers discovered that screen time causes teens to delay sleep, disrupting their sleep cycles. They also found that these sleep disturbances are associated with increased symptoms of depression in girls, but not in boys.
“We found that adolescents who reported longer screen times also developed poorer sleep habits over time,” concluded the research team led by Sebastian Hokby, a doctoral student at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “In turn, this led to increased depression levels, especially among girls.”
For the study, researchers targeted more than 4,800 Swedish teens between 12 and 16 years of age and collected data on sleep, depression symptoms and screen time at three different points during the year.
Researchers reported that depression symptoms in girls were more than twice as high as in boys, a gender difference consistent with findings from previous studies.
The American Academy of Pediatrics advises limiting screen time for children but does not specify a healthy duration, citing insufficient evidence to establish clear guidelines.
By comparison, the Swedish Public Health Agency recommends that teenagers spend no more than two to three hours a day on screens, partly to promote better sleep, researchers said.
“The public health recommendation to promote sleep by means of changing screen-related behaviours is … supported by this study,” researchers wrote.
“If screen times were somehow reduced, for example through public health policies, our results imply that the high burden of depressive states among young Swedish women, and maybe young men, would likely decrease,” they added.
