“You want the feeling that your technology is improving your life, not detracting from its quality,” he says.

Once those 30 days are up, he says, you can rebuild your screen habits from scratch

If you’ve been looking forward to Game of Thrones all week but then you can’t get through the episode without checking your phone, that’s a sign you may have shifted toward moderate behavioral addiction

“If you find your screens are starting to displace activities you think are more important or meaningful, that’s a sign that you may want to reconsider your use,”

The goal is finding balance between screen-based and non-screen activities

experts say the “just right” amount depends on what type of screen a person is looking at

the average American spends more than 11 hours a day absorbing media (though that includes non-screen activities like listening to radio or podcasts

There’s expert disagreement about whether heavy screen use is truly the cause of some people’s depression, or if people with depression are just more likely to spend lots of time on screens.

students who trimmed their use of social media to 30 minutes a day experienced significant improvements in wellbeing.

young people who spend seven hours or more a day interacting with screens are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety as those who use screens more moderately.

38 hours or more of non-work, non-school online activity—was associated with “significant social, psychological, and occupational impairments.”

Elsa described how she often brought home things to complete that she could not finish at the club:

Four major themes indicating the nexus of home and outside practices were initially identified – school-based practices, organized leisure practices, family holidays, and socialization with friends.

The most evident influence on children’s home activities was school, notably the use of screens for homework.

The study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority

Holidays extended into children’s everyday times and spaces, particularly through objects and things.

This meant that the child’s friends from school did not live in the same neighborhood, unlike the other children in this study.

It should also be mentioned here that while some of these may not be entirely sedentary, the paper adopted the approach used by Olds et al. (2010) in considering activities that are mainly conducted sitting

 I don’t really know anyone nearby to play with.

children spend a large part of their time at home while neighborhood play was almost non-existent

10 boys and 8 girls, aged 6-12 years

The first 2-3 visits included observation of the children’s practices at home, followed by semi-structured interviews with the children. Parents were not interviewed formally but the results include conversations with parents that took place during the visits and were considered relevant to the aims of the study.

Digital devices featured prominently in children’s homework and other screen-based practices; musical instruments, play equipment, toys, and craft materials were all entwined in children’s hobbies and leisure practices; and the presence of friends after school shaped the kinds of practices children engaged in.

mama and papa thought I should have it since we do most of the schoolwork on tablets.

The ways in which children’s sedentary behaviors are so deeply entrenched in normativity need to be acknowledged, particularly the tensions between these discourses.

This paper has shown how children’s home sedentary behaviors are complex and tied to various out-of-home practices.

Instead of focusing on individual and environmental factors affecting sedentary behavior, we need to consider children’s actual practices and their context.

deterministic view of materiality

normativity dictates which sedentary behaviors take preference.

material arrangements,

home with the outside

These are the inter-connectedness of different practices, that is, practices being intertwined and forming a ‘nexus of practices’ (Schatzki 1996, 2002, 2010a); the ways in which practices are intimately tied to material arrangements (Schatzki 2010b); and how practices are “partially determined by normativity”

like using media devices for homework

(over)eating

While the examples above are diverse, they all point to the ways in which children’s home lives are connected with the world beyond the home – social structure, parenting norms, and media discourses – and how all of these interact to produce a complex picture of children’s and families’ home lives.

Crucially, they find that even when parents tried to control children’s exposure to certain kinds of products, they filtered into children’s lives through other sources.

parental mediation

the importance of the home media environment and children’s access to media devices, along with parenting factors such as screen time rules, attitudes, and style of communication

Finally, a conclusions section reflects upon the relevance of the findings for the study of children’s sedentary behavior.

the home is a complex, porous space, and is molded by the ‘outside’ along with factors within the home setting

media-rich home environment and parenting practices

sedentary behavior has been linked with various negative physical and psycho-social health outcomes such as overweight and obesity; and lower self-esteem and pro-social behavior

a trend exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic

there is noconsensus on central definitions, measures, and methods.42

here is still no coherent empirical evidence as to whetherdigital technology hampers or fosters well-being

6

Effects might also not be linear

meaningfulsocial interactions have been shown to increase social grat-ification in adults,63,64 whereas passive media use or mediause as procrastination has been negatively related to well-being.6,8

These results emphasize thegrowing need for more robust andtransparent methods and analysis

In addition, much research cannot be reproduced

positive relations between exces-sive screen time and insufficient sleep, physiological stress,mind wandering, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder

people’s lives.4

It is likely thatsimilar effects can be found for both adolescents and adults.

During adolescence,general levels of life satisfaction and self-esteem drop andare often at their all-time lowest.33,34 At the same time, mediause increases and reaches a first peak in late adolescence.3

temporary measures

In contrast, hedonic well-being such as positive andnegative affect is volatile and subject to substantial fluctu-ations.17 Therefore, digital technology use might well be adriver of hedonic well-being

eudaimonic

To gain precision, it is necessary that we look at effectsfor different types of use, ideally objectively measured.

distinction between different types of use

two different types of social media

US showed that the most commonly used digital servicesare YouTube (85%), closely followed by the social mediaInstagram (72%), and Snapchat (69%)

and end witha brief conclusion.

this review provides an overview of the literatureregarding digital technology use and adolescent well-being