ArticleHeliyon2024
Associations among screen time, sleep, mental health and cognitive functioning in school-aged children during the COVID-19 pandemic, November 2020 through to August 2022.
Article in Heliyon, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Digital Screen Time and Mental Health Difficulties Among Preschool Children in Western China: Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Parental Perceived Stress and Its Association With Childhood Obesity in Spain: The PASOS Study.Preventing chronic disease · 2026Article
- Article
- Associations Between Screen Time, Sleep, and Executive Function in School-Aged Children and Adolescents: The Moderating Role of Digital Content and Age.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- The association between parental mental health and screen time among U.S. children aged 6-17.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- How Is the Digital Age Shaping Young Minds? A Rapid Systematic Review of Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents with Exposure to ICT.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: To examine children's screen time use and sleep patterns over 2 years of the pandemic and the downstream associations with children's executive functions and behavioural problems, as well as the moderating effects of parental factors. Method: This longitudinal cohort study examined school-aged children's lifestyle and behavioural changes over 2 years of the pandemic across 6 timepoints (November 2020 to August 2022). Latent growth modeling (LGM) was used to identify changes in screen time and sleep duration and multivariate LGM was used to determine how parental stress, positive parenting, changes in children's screen time and sleep over time were associated with children's executive functions and mental health outcomes at the final time point. Results: A total of 198 parents (children's mean age = 9.14 years) were recruited and followed up. Non-school screen time was elevated at the initial timepoint (3.6 ± 2.3 h). Positive parenting at the initial timepoint was associated with lower screen time use in children (β = -.19, p < .001; β = -.19, p < .001, in internalizing and externalizing models). Children whose screen time use was constant during the pandemic had shorter sleep durations (β = -.45, p < .05 in internalizing model). Executive function was predicted by sleep duration at the first timepoint (β = -.55, p < .001; β = .73, p < .001, in internalizing and externalizing models) and changes in screen time during the pandemic was associated with both internalizing and externalizing symptoms (β = .58, p < .05; β = .54, p < .05, in internalizing and externalizing models). Conclusion: Children's screen time decreased slightly but remained significantly higher than Canadian and International guidelines during 2 years of the pandemic. Positive parenting styles can have a significant impact on children's screen time use. Reducing excessive screen time can help improve sleep patterns and, consequently, cognitive, and emotional well-being in children.
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