Teenagers and smartphones: the real risk to mental health is dependence, not time on the screen

The number of hours spent glued to the screen is a parameter increasingly connected to the worsening of the mental health of teenagers.

Now, however, a study conducted on over 4,000 teenagers adds to the question – complex and far from clear, of the link between technology, anxiety and depression – an element that makes you think. And that is that the real risk to mental health It would not be so much, or beyond, the amount of time connected, but a compulsive and dependence attitude towards the smartphone. Even when you have it available for a short time. The results were published in the medical magazine Jama.

The scientists of the Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and the New York State Psychiatric Institute analyzed the changes in the use of the screens of 4,285 children, more widely at 10 years of age, and with updates once a year for the following four years. They evaluated parameters such as the relationship with social media and video games and investigated some “labors” such as the difficulty in laying the phonethe stress experienced when there was no access to the device and the compulsive use that made it over time available.

The basic question was: are the growing trajectories of smartphone addiction associated with bad mental health and suicidal ideation behaviors? Scientists found that a greater amount of time spent on the screen at ten years was not associated with a greater risk of suicidal thoughts four years later.

Rather, boys with a greater risk of imagining getting hurt or ending their lives They were the ones who had reported a growing mobile addiction – Like a high peak of activities on social media, growing pressure to interact with devices, an increasing difficulty posing them if required. These behaviors could also manifest themselves in those who had a smartphone in their hands for a short time over a day.

At the age of 14, the boys showing mobile addiction had a risk two or three times higher than suicidal ideation or self -harm acts.

The worrying figure is that the phenomena of mobile dependence in the study were very high, with half of the teenagers involved that reported the symptoms of the disorder. The study He has not shown a cause-effect link between the phenomena of addiction to smartphones and suicidal thoughtsbut it was able to demonstrate that a prolonged trajectory of “unhealthy” use of the screens preceded Mental health problems.

As explained in an article on New York Timesdependence behaviors in children of this age are difficult to deal with even for a matter of brain structures not yet completely developed. There prefrontal cortexa brake against impulsive behavior, is in fact still immature.

The emphasis on addiction can help focus more appropriate interventions to support the boys: the point may not be simply moving the cell phone, but work on the mechanisms behind its compulsive use. The skills of the devices to generate dependence phenomena also rekindles the question of Responsibility of Tech companies for damage to mental health attributable to the use of smartphones.

Notifications and apps of apps and social media are in fact designed for generate microgractifications which induce a release of dopamine into the brain, and a pleasant feeling that we want to continually repeat. In addition, these same mechanisms keep the brain in a state of constant alert.

Those who criticize the study remember that the time in front of the screen, although not completely illustrating the relationship between boys and smartphones, is still an important indicator – for example he tells us something about the hours of sleep sleeping, on the physical exercise and the “true” sociability of the boys. Another observation is that the time spent on the screen at the age of 10 may not be indicative of the time in front of the screen, and mental health, of those same boys four years later.