Screen Time: Conclusions About Effects of Digital Media Are Often Incomplete, Irrelevant or Wrong

By Byron Reeves, Nilam Ram and Thomas N. Robinson
There's a lot of talk about digital media. Increasing screen time has created worries about media's impacts on democracy, addiction, depression, relationships, learning, health, privacy and much more. The effects are frequently assumed to be huge, even apocalyptic.
Scientific data, however, often fail to confirm what seems true based on everyday experiences. In study after study, screen time is often not correlated with important effects at a magnitude that matches the concerns and expectations of media consumers, critics, teachers, parents, pediatricians and even the researchers themselves. For example, a recent review of over 200 studies about social media concluded there was almost no effect of greater screen time on psychological well-being. A comprehensive study of adolescents reported small effects of screen time on brain development, and no relationship between media use and cognitive performance. A review of 20 studies about the effects of multitasking with media – that is, using two or more screens at the same time – showed small declines in cognitive performance because of multitasking but also pointed out new studies that showed the opposite.
As communication, psychological and medical researchers interested in media effects, we are interested in how individuals' engagement with digital technology influences peoples' thoughts, emotions, behaviors, health and well-being.
Moving Beyond 'Screen Time'
Has the power of media over modern life been overstated? Probably not, but no one knows, because there is a severe lack of knowledge about what people are actually seeing and doing on their screens.
Individuals all around the world are now all looking at pretty much the same screens and spending a lot of time with them. However, the similarities between us end there. Many different kinds of applications, games and messages flow across people's screens. And, because it is so easy to create customized personal threads of experiences, each person ends up viewing very different material at different times. No two people share the same media experiences.
To determine the effects of media on people's lives, whether beneficial or harmful, requires knowledge of what people are actually seeing and doing on those screens. But researchers often mistakenly depend on a rather blunt metric – screen time.
Reports of screen time, the most common way to assess media use, are known to be terribly inaccurate and describe only total viewing time. Today, on a single screen, you can switch instantly between messaging a neighbor, watching the news, parenting a child, arranging for dinner delivery, planning a weekend trip, talking on an office video conference and even monitoring your car, home irrigation and lighting. Add to that more troublesome uses – bullying a classmate, hate speech or reading fabricated news. Knowing someone's screen time – their total dose of media – will not diagnose problems with any of that content.
A media solution based only on screen time is like medical advice to someone taking multiple prescription medications to reduce their total number of pills by half. Which medications and when?
Complex and Unique Nature of Media Use
What would be a better gauge of media consumption than screen time? Something that better captures the complexities of how individuals engage with media. Perhaps the details about specific categories of content – the names of the programs, software and websites – would be more informative. Sometimes that may be enough to highlight problems – playing a popular game more than intended, frequent visits to a suspicious political website or too much social time on Facebook.
Tracking big categories of content, however, is still not that helpful. My one hour of Facebook, for example, could be spent on self-expression and social comparison; yours could be filled with news, shopping, classes, games and videos. Further, our research finds that people now switch between content on their smartphones and laptops every 10 to 20 seconds on average. Many people average several hundred different smartphone sessions per day. The fast cadence certainly influences how people converse with each other and how engaged we are with information. And each bit of content is surrounded by other kinds of material. News read on Facebook sandwiches political content between social relationships, each one changing the interpretation of the other.
A Call for a Human Screenome Project
In this era of technology and big data, we need a DVR for digital life that records the entirety of individuals' screen media experiences – what we call the screenome, analogous to the genome, microbiome and other "omes" that define an individual's unique characteristics and exposures.
An individual's screenome includes apps and websites, the specific content observed and created, all of the words, images and sounds on the screens, and their time of day, duration and sequencing. It includes whether the content is produced by the user or sent from others. And it includes characteristics of use, such as variations in how much one interacts with a screen, how quickly one switches between content, scrolls through screens, and turns the screen on and off.
Without knowledge of the whole screenome, no one – including researchers, critics, educators, journalists or policymakers – can accurately describe the new media chaos. People need much better data – for science, policy, parenting and more. And it needs to be collected and supported by individuals and organizations who are motivated to share the information for all to analyze and apply.
The benefits from studying the human genome required developing the field of genomics. The same will be true for the human screenome, the unique individual record of experiences that constitute psychological and social life on digital devices. Researchers now have the technologies to begin a serious study of screenomics, which we describe in the journal Nature. Now we need the data – a collective effort to produce, map and analyze a large and informative set of screenomes. A Human Screenome Project could inform academics, health professionals, educators, parents, advocacy groups, tech companies and policymakers about how to maximize the potential of media and remedy its most pernicious effects.
Byron Reeves is a professor of communication at Stanford University.
Nilam Ram is a professor of human development and family studies, and psychology at Pennsylvania State University.
Thomas N. Robinson is a professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University.
Disclosure statement: Nilam Ram receives funding from National Institutes on Health. Thomas Robinson receives funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Stanford Maternal & Child Health Research Institute and Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University. Byron Reeves does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.
- WHO: Don't Expose Babies to Electronic Screens - EcoWatch ›
- More Time on Screens Means More Soda, Sports Drinks for Teens ... ›
- Too Much Screen Time May Be Slowing Childhood Brain ... ›
- Why Video Calls Are so Exhausting, and How to Avoid 'Zoom Fatigue' - EcoWatch ›
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
- Offshore Wind Power Is Ready to Boom. Here's What That Means for ... ›
- American Skyscrapers Kill an Estimated 600 Million Migratory Birds ... ›
Trending
Kentucky is coping with historic flooding after a weekend of record-breaking rainfall, enduring water rescues, evacuations and emergency declarations.
<div id="0f31c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4290ab3e7ec4e142f8bce774bab39f03"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1366307788155219969" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Just got back from my office... downtown Beattyville Kentucky is not a pretty sight. @KySportsRadio… https://t.co/6nXwyMKtRb</div> — Tom Jones (@Tom Jones)<a href="https://twitter.com/8atticus/statuses/1366307788155219969">1614588136.0</a></blockquote></div>
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b41a2da6bf23cc19a5f38c2dc6c5f9fc"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/dekalbtnfire/photos/a.924258171004562/3713119618785056/"></div></div>
Spring is coming. And soon, tree swallows will start building nests. But as the climate changes, the birds are nesting earlier in the spring.
- Spring Is Arriving Earlier Across the U.S. - EcoWatch ›
- Climate Change Leading to Fatal Bird Conflicts - EcoWatch ›
- The Unsettling Reason Why We're Seeing More Snowy Owls ... ›
Citigroup will strive to reach net-zero greenhouse gas pollution across its lending portfolio by 2050 and in its own operations by 2030, the investment group announced Monday.
- 20 Attorneys General Launch Climate Fraud Investigation of Exxon ... ›
- Exxon Plans to Increase Its Climate Pollution - EcoWatch ›
- Exxon to Slash 14,000 Jobs Worldwide as Oil Demand Drops ... ›