“If you read news headlines or indeed the government’s Onlin...

The UK government's plans for regulation of the internet and social media contained a long list of online harms. Among them was excessive screen use by teenagers.

On the Tech Tent podcast this week, we ask whether there is convincing evidence that spending hours staring at smartphones and other screens is damaging the mental health of young people.

f you read news headlines - or indeed the government's Online Harms White Paper - you might think that the case against screen time was a no-brainer. But this week, a study by the Oxford Internet Institute suggested that it had little obvious effect on the mental wellbeing of teenagers, even if they were spending hours staring at screens at bedtime.

"We look at general wellbeing," one of the researchers, Amy Orben, tells us. "We do not find a relationship between digital screen use 30 minutes, one hour and two hours before bed and a decrease in wellbeing."

The research examined data from more than 17,000 teenagers in the UK, Ireland and the United States

Source: www.bbc.com/news/technology-47910524