BACKGROUND: As smartphone devices have become a ubiquitous part of our modern lives, parents and clinicians have become increasingly concerned about the effects of digital media use on the mental well-being of adolescents and young adults. Smartphone ownership in youth has increased significantly over the last decade, paralleling the rise in mental health disorders. This study seeks to use the digital phenotyping (DP) methodology to elucidate these relationships. Most studies examining these variables use cross-sectional data in healthy adolescents. To our knowledge, no studies have used DP methodology to characterize the relationship between digital media use, depression and anxiety in a population of clinical adolescents.
METHODS: 50 adolescent and young adults between the ages of 12-23 receiving outpatient mental health services from a community hospital network in the greater Boston area were enrolled. Participants installed an application on their personal smartphones that collected daily surveys that captured mood symptoms, digital media use (screen time, social media time, and top apps used [active data]), and that also continuously captured sensor data (GPS and accelerometer [passive data]) over six weeks.
RESULTS: Using linear regression and multilevel modeling, no significant associations were found between screen time or social media time, and anxiety and depression symptoms. Productivity apps were used significantly more in those with no depression symptoms than in those with moderate to severe levels of depression.
CONCLUSION: Our study results challenge the present intuition that the amount of digital media use negatively impacts mental well-being in youth. Total screen time and social media time measures may be insufficient when attempting to assess the impact of digital media engagement on youth. Additionally, the results of our study suggest that the types of apps used by youth may depend on an individual’s mood severity. Although not without limitations, DP studies may be the ideal methodology for capturing with greater granularity digital use behavior and its association with mood symptoms in adolescents. / 2022-11-22T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43445 |
| Date | 22 November 2021 |
| Creators | Lin, Vanessa |
| Contributors | Young, Aaron W., Gansner, Meredith |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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