Influence of Screen Time during COVID-19 on Health-Related Quality of Life of Early Adolescents

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 23;19(17):10498. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191710498.

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of screen time during COVID-19 on the physical and mental domains of the health-related quality of life of early adolescents. A total of 860 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 and watching television over the previous week. The results show that most early adolescents, on average, spent less than 1 h to more than 4 h per day during COVID-19 using smartphones (n = 833, 96.9%) and computers (n = 783, 91.0%), and watching television (n = 804, 93.5%), respectively. Though early male and female adolescents spent a similar amount of time daily on average using smartphones, early male adolescents spent more time using computers and watching television than early female adolescents and reported a significantly lower mean score for three out of the eight scales in the physical and mental domains of health-related quality of life. While health-related quality of life of early female adolescents was negatively associated with time spent using smartphones only, early male adolescents were adversely affected by the time spent using smartphones and computers and watching television (p < 0.05). Therefore, early adolescents who spent more time using display devices during COVID-19 had significantly poorer outcomes in their health-related quality of life, and gender difference was found in the influence of screen time on health-related quality of life.

Keywords: early adolescents; health-related quality of life; screen time.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • Computers
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Quality of Life
  • Screen Time
  • Television*

Grants and funding

This research was funded by a grant from the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China to The Chinese University of Hong Kong, grant number CUHK 14607519 (M.-C.C.); the Direct Grant for Research 2020–2021 from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, grant number 178752386 (M.-C.C.); the research fund from Lee Hysan Foundation to The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, grant number R-ZH3Y (J.Y.); and the Seed Fund for Basic Research from The University of Hong Kong, grant number, 202111159028 (J.P.Y.C.).