Screen time and smartphone multitasking: the emerging risk factors for mental health in children and adolescents

Aim: High screen time and smartphone multitasking are ever-increasing phenomena among children and adolescents, which cause growing concern regarding potential impacts on mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between weekday/weekend screen time, smartphone multitasking, and mental health. Subject and methods: A total of 4024 students free of certain physical disease and mental disorders (aged 11–23 years) participated in this cross-sectional study. The Brief Instrument on Psychological Health of Youths (BIOPHY) was administered to assess psychological health. Apart from screen time, college students were requested to complete questionnaires on smartphone multitasking. Logistic regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between screen time/different types of smartphone multitasking activities and mental health. Results: Of the participants, 29.52% and 66.40% were classified as high screen time (>2 h/d) on weekdays and weekends, respectively, and 14.34% exhibited mental health problems. High screen time (versus ≤2 h/d) was significantly associated with higher odds of having mental health problems after adjusting for confounders. Furthermore, the effects were larger for weekdays (OR= 1.71; 95% CI1.36–2.15) compared to weekends (OR= 1.32; 95% CI1.07–1.61). There was also a trend toward significance for more frequent smartphone multitasking (including nonmedia, cross-media, and single-device multitasking) to be associated with a higher prevalence of mental health problems for college students. Conclusion: Arranging screen time reasonably and understanding smartphone multitasking correctly may be important for preventing psychological health problems for children and adolescents.