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. 2019 May:57:51-60.
doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2019.01.029. Epub 2019 Feb 2.

Sleep mediates the association between adolescent screen time and depressive symptoms

Xian Li  1 , Orfeu M Buxton  2 , Soomi Lee  3 , Anne-Marie Chang  4 , Lawrence M Berger  5 , Lauren Hale  6
Affiliations

Sleep mediates the association between adolescent screen time and depressive symptoms

Xian Li et al. Sleep Med. 2019 May.

Abstract

Objective: This study examined the associations between four types of screen-based activities and depressive symptoms among adolescents. We further investigated whether sleep characteristics (ie, insomnia symptoms and sleep duration) mediate these associations.

Methods: Data come from 2865 U.S. adolescents (mean age = 15.53, SD = 0.73, 51.8% male) in the age 15 follow-up of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Adolescents completed surveys regarding sleep duration and insomnia symptoms, typical daily duration of four screen activities (social messaging, web surfing, TV/movie watching, and gaming), and depressive symptoms. We constructed a multiple mediation model to elucidate the associations between age 15 screen time, sleep and depressive symptoms, while adjusting for age 9 depressive symptoms.

Results: Structural Equation Modeling analyses revealed that the association between screen time and depressive symptoms is partially or fully mediated by sleep. For social messaging, web surfing and TV/movie watching, the three sleep variables fully mediated the positive association between screen time and depressive symptoms. For gaming, the three sleep variables acted as partial mediators in the model, accounting for 38.5% of the association between gaming and depressive symptoms.

Conclusions: Our results highlight both screen-based activities and sleep behaviors as potential intervention targets to reduce depressive symptoms among adolescents.

Keywords: Depressive symptoms; Gaming; Insomnia symptoms; Screen time; Sleep duration; Social messaging.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

The other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Outside of the current work, Orfeu M. Buxton discloses that he received two subcontract grants to Penn State from Mobile Sleep Technologies (NSF/STTR #1622766, NIH/NIA SBIR R43AG056250). Dr. Lauren Hale receives an honorarium from the National Sleep Foundation for serving as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sleep Health.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The research model of three sleep variables mediating the association between adolescent screen time and depressive symptoms.
Figure 2A.
Figure 2A.
Latent variable path models of social messaging and depressive symptoms mediated by sleep problems and sleep duration. Coefficients are standardized path coefficients controlling for covariates, N=2,865. * p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Figure 2B.
Figure 2B.
Latent variable path models of web surfing and depressive symptoms mediated by sleep problems and sleep duration. Coefficients are standardized path coefficients controlling for covariates, N=2,865. * p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Figure 2C.
Figure 2C.
Latent variable path models of TV watching and depressive symptoms mediated by sleep problems and sleep duration. Coefficients are standardized path coefficients controlling for covariates, N=2,865. * p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Figure 2D.
Figure 2D.
Latent variable path models of gaming and depressive symptoms mediated by sleep problems and sleep duration. Coefficients are standardized path coefficients controlling for covariates, N=2,865. * p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
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