Screen Time and Learner Well-being

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Reframing the Debate: Screen Time and Learner Well-being There are always hypes and concerns surrounding new technology. While changing technologies certainly have some effects on us, these effects—both negative and positive—can often be exaggerated during the early stages of diffusion of a new technology. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, there were concerns about screen time as related to ‘learner wellbeing’ (See Box 1) that includes social skills deficits, deteriorating physical and mental health, and aggression of young children and adolescents. Box 1: Defining ‘screen time’ and ‘learner well-being’ Definition of screen time: Screen time refers to time spent on screen-based media devices, including TV and both mobile and stationary digital devices of different sizes, such as smart phones, tablets and computers. Definition of learner well-being: The notion of learner well-being in this paper entails both learning outcomes (cognitive) and health outcomes (mental such as social and emotional development and physical health). The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) revised its screen time guidelines in 2016 to recommend no use of screen media except for video-chatting for children under 18 months, and ‘high-quality’ programming for children of 18-24 months of age and 1 hour daily screen limit for 2 to 5 year olds, with parental co-viewing. Similarly, regarding pre-school exposure to screens, the Canadian Paediatric Society (2017) recommends no screen time for children under 2 years old, a 1-hour daily limit for 2-5-year olds and avoiding screens for an hour before bed. It has been pointed out that screen time guidelines are not always evidence-based, and that it is not possible to give limits or thresholds on screen time given that the effects of screen time depend so much on context (Viner, Davie and Firth 2019; Stiglic and Viner 2019). There are general tendencies in the media and paediatric communities to overstate the risks of prolonged screen time. It is important to bring to the fore what we know and do not know about the use of digital media devices and learner wellbeing and the gaps in research and practice we need to address. With social distancing restricting our ability to have face-to-face interaction, for many of us, screens are our lifelines and our window into the outside world. Both the negative and positive effects of using screen devices need to be considered in reframing the overgeneralized and oversimplified screen-time debate and advancing public debate and evidence-informed policymaking on the use of screen-based digital media devices for young children and adolescents. 4 Screen Time and Learner Well-being: The Debate, the Evidence and Directions for Future Research and Policy A Research Brief by UNESCO MGIEP
Approach This paper provides a rapid scoping review of recent systematic reviews (including a review of reviews and meta-analyses) and research studies on the effects of the use of screen-based digital media devices on learner well-being (including learning gains). The purpose is to scope a body of health literature on screen time, clarify definitions and conceptual boundaries of screen time, and identify gaps in the research. This scoping review draws primarily on a core set of 22 articles on screen time recently published in peer-reviewed journals as its main source of information (see Appendix I). Aside from two articles, they were all published within the last 10 years, and the majority of them were published within the last 5 years. While the majority of these 22 studies cover North American and European countries, they include focused studies undertaken in Australia, Thailand, Turkey, Iran, and China. The core set of articles includes five systematic reviews (one Review of Reviews and two metaanalyses) which together cover 377 studies in total. The total number of participants in the 22 studies covered in the present review amounts to 3.77 million (see Appendix I). Rubrics were designed and used to highlight analytical foci and key messages and draw key recommendations from these articles (see Appendix II). In addition, the paper draws on peer-reviewed literature which does not explicitly focus on screen time but on relevant topics such as learning through different media and instructional effectiveness of computer games. It also covers reports by international organizations that might not have been peer reviewed, taking into account their influence in national and international policymaking. Methodological limitations of the current review Due to the rapid nature of this scoping review, this paper is not based on a comprehensive literature search but draws on a selection of studies that have explored the topic of screen time, and only studies in English were included. Although Carson’s (2016) systematic review of sedentary behaviour and health indicators covered 235 studies from 71 countries, most literature reviewed for this paper focuses on data from North America and Europe (see Appendix I), and thus generalizability of research findings and their applicability to the rest of the world might need to be cautiously evaluated. As a result of the prevalence of remote working and distance learning in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is speculated that averages of daily screen time have drastically increased. For example, a newspaper reported that screen time for children doubled after the first lockdown was introduced in India based on a survey conducted with parents of children 5 Screen Time and Learner Well-being: The Debate, the Evidence and Directions for Future Research and Policy A Research Brief by UNESCO MGIEP
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Page 17 and 18: Conclusion Time spent on screens—
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