Problematic social media and gaming use, screen time, and youth mental health and brain structure in the ABCD Study

In an increasingly digital age, knowing which kinds of screen use relate to mental health in adolescents could help guide prevention efforts for a vulnerable population. Earlier work has examined this question, but the findings have been difficult to interpret. For instance, most studies measure screen use in hours, while it may be more informative to know whether adolescents have difficulty controlling their use. This is especially important now that adolescents use screens for school, games and contact with friends. Whether these patterns are reflected in the brain also remains largely unexplored. ABCD Study release 7.0 (N=11,860) is well suited to these questions because of its comprehensive profiling across neuroimaging, behavioral and clinical domains. In a preregistered study, we examined how screen time, problematic social media use (SMAQ) and problematic video game use (VGAQ) relate to parent-rated mental health, brain structure and resting-state connectivity. All five confirmatory associations were positive but small (β = 0.051 to 0.173) and remained consistent across several robustness checks. In the same participants, the problematic use scales were more strongly related to attention problems than hours of use were. The association between screen time and anxiety problems was present in male but not female participants. More screen time was associated with slightly smaller putamen and caudate volumes, while resting-state connectivity did not predict SMAQ. In exploratory analyses, SMAQ predicted later attention problems more than the reverse, while for gaming, attention problems predicted later VGAQ more strongly. Most of the association seemed to come from problematic use rather than use time by itself. Overall, the effects were small but consistent, in line with earlier work in the ABCD Study. We hope this analysis can contribute to a better understanding of how social media and gaming relate to adolescent mental health and brain development.