Washington, Nov 14 (PTI) Prolonged use of smartphones and computers may increase the risk of depression and suicide-related behaviours in teenagers, especially girls, a majorstudy warns.
"These increases in mental health issues among teens arevery alarming," said Jean Twenge, from the San Diego StateUniversity in the US.
"Teens are telling us they are struggling, and we need totake that very seriously," Twenge said.
Researchers studied questionnaire data from more than500,000 teens.
The study published in the journal Clinical PsychologicalScience looked at data suicide statistics kept by the USCenters for Disease Control and Prevention.
They found that the suicide rate for girls aged between13 and 18 years increased by 65 per cent between 2010 and2015.
The number of girls experiencing so called suicide-related outcomes - feeling hopeless, thinking about suicide,planning for suicide or attempting suicide - rose by 12 percent.
The number of teen girls reporting symptoms of severedepression increased by 58 per cent.
"When I first saw these sudden increases in mental healthissues, I wasn't sure what was causing them," Twenge said.
"But these same surveys ask teens how they spend theirleisure time, and between 2010 and 2015, teens increasinglyspent more time with screens and less time on otheractivities," he said.
"That was by far the largest change in their lives duringthis five-year period, and it's not a good formula for mentalhealth," he added.
The researchers returned to the data and looked to see ifthere was a statistical correlation between screen-time anddepressive symptoms and suicide-related outcomes.
They found that 48 per cent of teens who spent five ormore hours per day on electronic devices reported at least onesuicide-related outcome, compared to only 28 per cent of thosewho spent less than an hour a day on devices.
Depressive symptoms were more common in teens who spent alot of time on their devices, as well.
On the positive side, the researchers found that spendingtime away from screen and engaging in social interaction,sports and exercise, doing homework, attending religiousservices, etc was linked to having fewer depressive symptomsand suicide-related outcomes. PTI SNE SARSNE.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.