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Spending time on your smartphone browsing social media and replying to messages isn’t bad for mental health, psychologists say.
By analyzing both Android and iPhone users, British researchers found that time spent on a smartphone is a bad predictor of anxiety, depression or stress.
People who scored high on depressive symptoms, meanwhile, were not found using their smartphones any more than those with low depressive symptoms.
Worrying about how much time you spend on your smartphone, rather than the actual time spent on it, is more likely to be the cause of any negative psychological impact, experts say.
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General smartphone usage is a bad predictor of anxiety, depression or stress, say University of Lincoln and University of Bath researchers
“It is important to consider the actual use of the device separately from people’s concerns and concerns about the technology,” said study author Heather Shaw of Lancaster University’s Department of Psychology.
“This is because the former does not show any notable relationship to mental health, while the latter does.”
For their study, the researchers considered different ways of measuring “smartphone usage” through problematic smartphone use (PSU) scales, subjective estimates and objective logs based on watch time.
The first part of the study recruited 46 people who owned Android smartphones, whose usage was monitored for a week.
Participants were also asked about their mental health, completing clinical scales that measure symptoms of anxiety, stress, and depression.
Participants also compiled a problematic smartphone use (PSU) scale, which measured how problematic smartphone use was perceived and provided estimates of their usage time.
For the PSU, participants rated the extent to which they accepted various statements, such as “feeling pleasant or excited while using a smartphone” on a six-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” , with higher scores indicating a higher risk of addiction.
The researchers measured the time spent on smartphones by 199 iPhone users and 46 Android users for a week
For the second part of the study, 199 iPhone users were recruited, who completed an online survey asking them to report their smartphone usage from the “Apple Watch Time” settings for the past week.
IPhone users were asked the same mental health questions as in Part 1, completed the PSU scale, and provided estimates of their usage.
Despite the plethora of reports to the contrary, the amount of time spent on the smartphone was not related to poor mental health.
“Daily smartphone withdrawals or the time spent in front of a person’s screen did not predict symptoms of anxiety, depression or stress,” Shaw said.
“In addition, those who passed the clinical ‘cut off points’ for both general anxiety and major depressive disorder did not use the phone more than those who scored below this threshold.”
Previous studies have found the negative impact of “screen time”.
For example, a 2018 study by American psychologist Jean Twenge and other researchers linked increasing smartphone screen time to reduce psychological well-being.
This new study shows that people’s attitudes or concerns are likely to drive such outcomes and harm psychological well-being.
This is an important distinction to consider for experts who publicly emphasize the need to spend time away from their phone, especially during the current pandemic, experts suggest.
In fact, reducing overall screen time “won’t make people happier” during the Covid-19 pandemic, which forces more people to use phones and devices to stay in touch with friends, family and colleagues.
“Our findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that reducing overall screen time won’t make people happier,” said study author Dr. David Ellis of the University of Bath.
“Instead of pushing the benefits of digital detox, our research suggests that people would benefit from measures to address the concerns and fears that have grown around time spent using their phones.”
The study was published in Technology, Mind, and Behavior.
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