Abstract
Background: High quality, longitudinal data describing young people’s screen use across a number of distinct forms of screen activity is missing from the literature. This study tracked multiple screen use activities (passive screen use, gaming, social networking, web searching) amongst 10- to 17-year-old adolescents across 24 months.
Methods: This study tracked the screen use of 1,948 Australian students in Grade 5 (n=636), Grade 7 (n=672), and Grade 9 (n=640) for 24 months. At approximately six-month intervals, students reported their total screen time as well as time spent on social networking, passive screen use, gaming, and web use. Patterns of screen use were determined using latent growth curve modelling.
Results: In the Grades 7 and 9 cohorts, girls generally reported more screen use than boys (by approximately one hour a day), though all cohorts of boys reported more gaming. The different forms of screen use were remarkably stable, though specific cohorts showed change for certain forms of screen activity.
Conclusion: These results highlight the diverse nature of adolescent screen use and emphasise the need to consider both grade and sex in future research and policy.
Methods: This study tracked the screen use of 1,948 Australian students in Grade 5 (n=636), Grade 7 (n=672), and Grade 9 (n=640) for 24 months. At approximately six-month intervals, students reported their total screen time as well as time spent on social networking, passive screen use, gaming, and web use. Patterns of screen use were determined using latent growth curve modelling.
Results: In the Grades 7 and 9 cohorts, girls generally reported more screen use than boys (by approximately one hour a day), though all cohorts of boys reported more gaming. The different forms of screen use were remarkably stable, though specific cohorts showed change for certain forms of screen activity.
Conclusion: These results highlight the diverse nature of adolescent screen use and emphasise the need to consider both grade and sex in future research and policy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 332 (2018) |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | BMC Public Health |
| Volume | 18 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Mar 2018 |
Keywords
- electronic screen use
- guidelines
- age factors
- internet/statistics & numerical data
- social networking
- humans
- male
- models, statistical
- video games/statistics & numerical data
- time factors
- television/statistics & numerical data
- adolescent
- sex factors
- female
- students/psychology
- adolescent behavior
- Australia
- child
- longitudinal studies
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Documents and Links
- Rosenberg, M. et al (2018) A latent growth curve model to estimate electronic screen use patterns amongst adolescents aged 10 to 17 years
© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.