Parents of screenagers can cut themselves some slack.
While about two-thirds of parents in a recent Pew survey say that they are concerned about their teens spending too much time in front of screens, new research from the University of Oxford [1]assures that screen time — even before bed — has little impact on teen well-being.
The research team analyzed data from more than 17,000 adolescents from the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland, using both self-reported measures and time-use diaries to get a more accurate picture of how much time each teen spent on a screen each day, as well as what they were doing on them, such as playing video games, chatting and texting with friends, sending emails or browsing the internet, scrolling through social media sites like Facebook FB, -0.17%[2] , Twitter TWTR, +0.87%[3] and Snapchat SNAP, +4.96%[4] ; and watching TV, films, videos or DVDs. (In comparison, many screen-time studies rely on self-reported digital technology use, which is only accurate about one-third of the time[5], as 42% of subjects overestimate their usage, and 26% underestimate it.)
And they found that “adolescents’ total screen time per day had little impact on their mental health, both on weekends and weekdays.” And staring at screens for 30 minutes, one hour or even two hours before bedtime also “didn’t have clear associations” with decreasing their well-being, despite previous research[6] that suggests using screens before bed disrupts sleep[7].
The impact of screen time on teenagers in this Oxford study was so small, in fact, that the report claimed adolescents “would need to report 63 hours and 31 minutes more of technology use a day in their time-use diaries” to lower their well-being enough for them to notice.
The American Academy of Pediatrics[8] also recently relaxed its screen time guidelines for adolescents, suggesting that families should come up with a personalized balance of on/off time tailored to their teen — as long as he or she still gets one hour of exercise a day, and eight to 12 hours of sleep each night.
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The Oxford study authors did not respond to a request for comment by press time. But Mike Robb, the senior director at Common Sense Media, told MarketWatch that he was “not...