ReviewChild: care, health and development2026
Screen Use and Child and Adolescent Health in Canada: Triangulation of Evidence Assessing the State of the Effort.
Review in Child: care, health and development, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Screen Use and Child and Adolescent Health in Canada: Triangulation of Evidence Assessing the State of the Effort.Child: care, health and development · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundExcessive screen use in children and adolescents is an increasingly prevalent, pervasive and pressing public health issue in Canada. This project investigated the 'state of the effort' in relation to screen use and healthy development in children and adolescents in Canada.
methodsFive investigations were employed to identify, describe, interpret and triangulate the current evidence, including a national opinion survey, environmental scan, school board policy scan, network analysis and text mining analysis of Canadian news headlines.
resultsScreen use and healthy child development is an important issue for Canadian parents (n = 385), and they believe schools (79%), governments (73%) and technology companies (71%) have a responsibility to promote safe use. Most policy documents found were relatively recent (2023+) with both provincial (e.g., educational settings with a focus on personal digital devices) and national scope (e.g., protecting children regarding online programming, content and privacy). Of the 38 largest school boards in Canada, 84% ban or restrict students' unnecessary use of mobile devices during classroom/instructional time and 42% block or restrict access to social media platforms. Linked network analysis clusters included health, research, advocacy, law, policy, education, environment and physical activity, with most partnerships being weak, indicating a suboptimal connection among these sectors. Dramatic increases in related media headlines were found in 2024 (n = 1061) compared with 2023 (n = 400), and most lexicon sentiments were negative.
conclusionConcerns over excessive and inappropriate digital screen use among Canadian children and adolescents have escalated recently. This work highlights that while there is much recent activity across sectors occurring in Canada, policy is lacking, and efforts lack coordination, cross-sectoral collaboration, and synergy, likely resulting in suboptimal impact.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.