Andrea Chrysanthou says it’s been almost impossible to limit her 13-year-old son Nathaniel’s screen time.
“My son understands that he’s addicted,” said Chrysanthou, the Toronto-based board chair of the advocacy group Children First Canada. She says he’s asked her for help to stop using his digital device so much, but the minute she turns her back, he’s reaching for it again.
Her son is like millions of other kids around the world whose physical and mental well-being are at risk because of excess screen time, according to a new series of research papers published Sunday by medical journal The Lancet.
It’s a broad review of international studies that allowed researchers to distill the potential harms and benefits of digital technology, and offers a sense of “what needs to happen to protect children’s health,” said co-author Jay Shaw, an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Physical Therapy.
Despite the breadth of their analysis, Shaw and his colleagues say the true severity of the issue can’t be fully understood or addressed without access to tech companies’ own user data — something those companies are currently under no obligation to share.
But they say their research makes the case that screen addiction among young people is a public health issue that requires governments to intervene.
Parents can’t be the only line of defence, Chrysanthou told CBC News.
“We want the companies and the platforms to take responsibility, to make their platforms safe.”
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A ‘clear’ picture
Shaw and his fellow researchers reviewed data from 2,790 studies comprised of more than nine million participants.
Among the youngest users of digital devices, age 10 and under, too much screen time was linked to sleeping less and affected cognitive, emotional and social development.
There was a wider range of implications for young people between the ages of 10 and 24, from mental health problems and reduced physical activity to substance abuse, self-harm and suicidal ideation.
“I think we’re in a moment globally right now, where the harms associated with digital media use, especially for young people, have become quite clear,” Shaw told CBC News.
Dr. Rachel Mitchell, a psychiatrist at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, says this research confirms that tech and social media companies need to share responsibility.
She says most digital platforms and applications weren’t designed for young people, noting that kids five and under and adolescents are at a time in their lives when their brains are still developing and they are more vulnerable.
Mitchell says they’re being bombarded with digital distractions from various applications, games and platforms that often aim to capture constant attention by employing features like autoplay, push notifications and elements of gamification, along with daily rewards for online activity.
“Adults, at least, have fully developed frontal lobes with which to regulate, and they can’t even do it themselves,” she said, referring to the ability to limit screen use.
“So, why we’re expecting children to do it is beyond me.”
While Canadian students still perform well globally in math, science and reading, scores have dipped significantly in recent years. Some educational experts blame the rising overuse of AI and too much screen time.
Tech’s ‘big tobacco’ moment?
Shaw says there’s a long history of public health interventions when it comes to health-related concerns about certain habits, such as smoking. He says the addictive nature of social media and other digital platforms should be no different.
And society, he says, may be at its “so-called big tobacco moment” with technology.
“If we don’t get out in front of it, then digital technologies will end up being more harmful than beneficial for public health.”
But Mitchell says addressing excess screen use, especially for young people, is a different scenario than smoking.
She says there are no real benefits to smoking, while digital devices and media serve many purposes in our daily lives.
A cigarette, she adds, won’t help you find your way around the city — but a phone will.
In fact, Mitchell points out, the data review in The Lancet highlights the positive benefits of digital media for young people when it’s used in moderation, as well as when it’s used for education and extracurricular learning.
But, she says in order to leverage the benefits, the risks of these technologies need to be managed.
Mitchell says this new research series demonstrates that the risks are so high and affect such a wide population that it’s no longer ethically or morally possible for people to manage without intervention from the government or the tech companies themselves.
Some social media and tech companies have implemented tools aimed at helping parents reduce the amount of time their children spend scrolling.
Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, agreed to implement age limits in the U.S. when it settled a multi-state class-action lawsuit for $18 billion US in August. It was described as the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside of the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s.
TikTok has a default setting that limits usage to one hour for users between the ages of 13 to 17, but this setting can be changed or turned off.
The head of Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., recently told BBC News the company is open to time restrictions for teens.
Steps like these, Mitchell says, are “absolutely necessary” and “should have been there from day one.”
Ottawa’s proposed social media ban for kids under 16 has seen a generally warm response so far, but some parents and experts are concerned over a lack of details on how the government would hold social media companies accountable.
Push for tech company transparency
Shaw and his fellow researchers hope the review can help governments shape public health policy to address the potential harms that the overuse of digital media has on young people.
But he says without access to user data from big tech companies, it will be difficult to get a true picture of how much young people are interacting with digital devices and of the true toll it takes on their physical and mental well-being.
Their series of papers notes that tech giants like Meta, TikTok and Google aren’t obligated to share such data or details about how their algorithms fuel prolonged use, especially among young people.
“It’s very hard to reconcile morally, ethically, how that data cannot be available to researchers,” Mitchell said.
Digital safety legislation like the federal government’s proposed Safe Social Media Act (Bill C-34) would, if passed, compel tech platforms to be transparent and provide accredited researchers with access to electronic data related to online safety.
Bill C-34 would also force social media companies to restrict accounts for children under 16 unless the platforms can implement adequate safeguards to protect them.
The bill, which has yet to be debated in the House of Commons, has drawn criticism over whether it may violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But neither Mitchell nor Shaw and his colleagues are making the case to ban children from using social media — even Children First Canada’s Chrysanthou isn’t sure it would work.
She says that in places like Australia, where age limits on social media were put in place earlier this year, many kids remain online, having found a way around restrictions or because the tech companies haven’t employed effective checks.
“Beyond some kind of regulations around screen time,” Chrysanthou said, “we want the companies and the platforms to take responsibility, to make their platforms safe.”
A growing number of Canadian parents are pushing back against the amount of screen time their kids are having in school, as textbooks and assignments migrate from page to screen.
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