This study explored the daily amount of time that early adolescents spent using smartphones and computers, and their influences on health-related quality of life of early adolescents. A total of 650 early adolescents were recruited. The 36-Item Short Form Health Survey was used to measure their health-related quality of life. The early adolescents reported their average daily time spent using smartphones and computers over the course of the previous week; the majority of early adolescents (71%) spent approximately 1 h a day or less using computers on average or reported no computer use, and 98.8% indicated that they used smartphones for less than 1 h to more than 4 h per day on average. The results showed that the average daily time spent using smartphones was significantly negatively associated with two scales in the physical domain and four scales in the mental domain of health-related quality of life of early adolescents, whereas the average daily time spent using computers was significantly negatively associated with two scales in the mental domain (p < 0.05). Therefore, early adolescents who spent more time using smartphones and computers have significantly poorer outcomes in the physical and mental domains of their health-related quality of life.
Keywords: computer; early adolescents; health-related quality of life; smartphone.