{"id":121316,"date":"2025-05-22T01:54:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T01:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/121316\/"},"modified":"2025-05-22T01:54:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T01:54:31","slug":"teen-girls-screen-time-linked-to-poor-sleep-and-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/121316\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen girls\u2019 screen time linked to poor sleep and depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Published on
\n 18\/05\/2025 – 10:00 GMT+2<\/p>\n

\"\"ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

Teenage girls who spend more time on their phones are more likely to sleep badly and have signs of depression, researchers in Sweden found.<\/p>\n

The study included 4,810 Swedish students aged 12 to 16. Researchers from the Karolinska Institute monitored their screen time habits, sleep patterns, and symptoms of depression over a one-year period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both girls and boys spent three to four hours per day on their devices, above the two- or three-hour limit that Sweden\u2019s public health agency recommends for teenagers.<\/p>\n

But at the roughly same level of screen time, teen girls had an average depression score that was twice as high as among boys.<\/p>\n

The findings, published in the journal PLOS Global Public Health<\/strong>,<\/a> confirmed that high screen time leads to sleep \u201cdisplacement,\u201d meaning people fall asleep ater than they would on the body\u2019s natural schedule.<\/p>\n

Among teen girls, screen-driven displacement impacted their sleep quality, how long they slept and their chronotype, or the natural inclination of the body to sleep at a certain time.<\/p>\n

Teen girls were also more likely to report symptoms of depression \u2013 but this wasn\u2019t the case for boys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur results do suggest that less\u2026 screen time seems healthier, in line with previous World Health Organization statements,\u201d the authors said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If people lowered their screen time, \u201cthe high burden of depressive states among young Swedish women, and maybe young men, would likely decrease,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

The findings are in line with previous research that followed 45,000 Norwegian university students, and found a strong relationship between screen time in bed, insomnia symptoms, and shorter sleep duration.<\/p>\n

More research needed<\/p>\n

But other researchers urged caution and for more studies to be done before jumping to any conclusions.<\/p>\n

Notably, the Swedish analysis doesn\u2019t establish that high screen time causes poor sleep and depression \u2013 just that they are correlated.<\/p>\n

The study has some other limitations. The teenagers reported their own screen time, \u201ca method known for its unreliability,\u201d Chris Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University in the US who wasn\u2019t involved with the study, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Even so, other scientists said the findings could help make the case for national guidelines on smartphone use on school nights.<\/p>\n

Ben Carter, a professor of medical statistics at King\u2019s College London who was not involved with the study, said such guidelines could \u201cempower parents and help adolescents improve their sleep and prevent daytime sleepiness\u201d.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s especially important, he said in a statement, because \u201csleep in the development of adolescents is essential\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 18\/05\/2025 – 10:00 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT Teenage girls who spend more time on their phones are more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[1301,105,218,14849,54074,234,3809,18263,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-121316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-depression","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-mobile-phones","12":"tag-regular-sleep","13":"tag-sleep","14":"tag-smartphone","15":"tag-teenager","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114548997125948311","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}