The New York Times (6/18, Barry ) reports that a study published in JAMA found that “longer screen time at age 10 was not associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior four years later.” Instead, researchers observed that “children at higher risk for suicidal behaviors were those who told researchers their use of technology had become ‘addictive’ – that they had trouble putting it down, or felt the need to use it more and more.” They found that “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.” It also “found higher levels of addictive use of social media, video games and mobile phones among Black and Hispanic adolescents,” and that “for nearly half of the children in the study, addictive phone use was consistently high from age 11; another 25 percent began with low addictive use, which increased steeply.”
Psychiatric News (6/18) reports the researchers used “data from 4,285 youth enrolled in the longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study.” They found that “nearly half of the participants had high addictive use scores for mobile phones throughout the follow-up, and more than 40% had a high addictive use trajectory for video games. Only 10% of participants had a high addictive use trajectory for social media, but another 31% had addictive use scores that increased over time; 25% of participants also reported an increasing addictive use trajectory for mobile phones.”
Related Links:
— “Screentime Addictive Behaviors in Children Common, Tied to Later Suicidality,” Psychiatric News, June 18, 2025