• Question: Is there a long term effect to looking at screens?

    Asked by anon-228668 to Jolel, Emily, Amber, Alex on 12 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Jolel Miah

      Jolel Miah answered on 12 Nov 2019:

      There is a lot of work to be done in this area, we already know we are becoming less active and we are putting on weight as a result. Also, this is having an impact on our social development becoming more isolated, however, I am optimistic, i think our brains will adapt over time like it has done over the years and we will learn more.

    • Photo: Emily Mattacola

      Emily Mattacola answered on 12 Nov 2019:

      There is quite a bit of debate in this area at the minute. The area of psychology which looks at this is called cyberpsychology, which is a really cool new area of study. The conclusions we can say at the minute, it’s that it’s not as simple as saying screen time is always bad or always good. Too much of it is bad for our physical health if it stops us from being physically active, but its relationship to our mental health is much more complicated. Really, most of the good quality research which has been done seems to say that it depends on how much time you’re spending on your screen, and what it is you’re looking at on the screen. If you’re spending hours a day scrolling through celebrity feeds on social media, then that’s likely to have a bad effect on your physical and mental health. However, spending small amounts of time using social media to talk to our friends and do fun things like gaming with friends is far less bad for our mental health, and some research says could even be quite positive for us.

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