Dennis Thompson
Mar 29, 2023
Children's screen use could be altering their developing brains as they enter adolescence and increasing their risk for mood disorders, a major new study finds.
Children's screen use could be altering their developing brains as they enter adolescence and increasing their risk for mood disorders, a major new study finds.
Children ages 9 and 10 who spend more time on smartphones, tablets, video games and TV exhibited higher levels of depression and anxiety by the time they were 11 and 12, researchers found.
Further, the investigators linked some of these mood disorders to actual structural changes occurring in the kids' developing brains, according to the report published online recently in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.
"There were specific brain mechanisms that in part contributed to this relationship, meaning from a statistical perspective there were brain-based changes occurring over the two-year period that mediated the relationship between screen media activity in the younger children and internalizing concerns relating to depression and anxiety two years later," said senior researcher Dr. Marc Potenza. He is a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center, in New Haven, Conn.