{"id":29861,"date":"2025-06-18T15:10:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29861"},"modified":"2025-06-18T15:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:25:12","slug":"real-risk-to-youth-mental-health-is-addictive-use-not-screen-time-alone-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29861","title":{"rendered":"Real Risk to Youth Mental Health Is \u2018Addictive Use,\u2019 Not Screen Time Alone, Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Researchers found children with highly addictive use of phones, video games or social media were two to three times as likely to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves.<\/p>\n

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As Americans scramble to respond to rising rates of suicidal behavior among youth, many policymakers have locked in on an alarming metric: the number of hours a day that American children spend glued to a glowing screen.<\/p>\n

But a study published on Wednesday<\/a> in the medical journal JAMA, which followed more than 4,000 children across the country, arrived at a surprising conclusion: Longer screen time at age 10 was not associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior four years later.<\/p>\n

Instead, the authors found, the children at higher risk for suicidal behaviors were those who told researchers their use of technology had become \u201caddictive\u201d \u2014 that they had trouble putting it down, or felt the need to use it more and more. Some children exhibited addictive behavior even if their screen time was relatively low, they said.<\/p>\n

The researchers found addictive behavior to be very common among children \u2014 especially in their use of mobile phones, where nearly half had high addictive use. By age 14, children with high or increasing addictive behavior were two to three times as likely as other children to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves, the study found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is the first study to identify that addictive use is important, and is actually the root cause, instead of time,\u201d said Yunyu Xiao, an assistant professor of psychiatry and population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College and the study\u2019s lead author.<\/p>\n

Addictive behavior may be more difficult to control during childhood, before the prefrontal cortex, which acts as a brake on impulsivity, is fully developed.<\/p>\n

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Researchers found children with highly addictive use of phones, video games or social media were two to three times as likely to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves.As Americans scramble to respond to rising rates of suicidal behavior among youth, many policymakers have locked in on an alarming metric: the number of hours a day that American children spend glued to a glowing screen.But a study published on Wednesday in the medical journal JAMA, which followed more than 4,000 children across the country, arrived at a surprising conclusion: Longer screen time at age 10 was not associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior four years later.Instead, the authors found, the children at higher risk for suicidal behaviors were those who told researchers their use of technology had become \u201caddictive\u201d \u2014 that they had trouble putting it down, or felt the need to use it more and more. Some children exhibited addictive behavior even if their screen time was relatively low, they said.The researchers found addictive behavior to be very common among children \u2014 especially in their use of mobile phones, where nearly half had high addictive use. By age 14, children with high or increasing addictive behavior were two to three times as likely as other children to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves, the study found.\u201cThis is the first study to identify that addictive use is important, and is actually the root cause, instead of time,\u201d said Yunyu Xiao, an assistant professor of psychiatry and population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College and the study\u2019s lead author.Addictive behavior may be more difficult to control during childhood, before the prefrontal cortex, which acts as a brake on impulsivity, is fully developed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29863,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29861"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29864,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29861\/revisions\/29864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}