A Narrative Review of Screen Time and Wellbeing among Adolescents before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for the Future

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of many. In particular, during the height of the pandemic, many experienced lockdowns, which in turn increased screen time drastically. While the pandemic has been declared an endemic and most activities have been reinstated, there appears to still be elevated screen time among adolescents due to poor habits formed during the pandemic lockdowns. This paper explores the factors by which screen time affects well-being among adolescents and how the pandemic may have influenced some of these factors. For example, beyond having greater screen time, many adolescents have also reduced their physical activities and picked up poor sleeping habits. These findings highlight the importance of having integrated activity guidelines that go beyond limiting adolescents' daily screen time. It is important to affirm that beyond ensuring that adolescents limit their daily screen time, they are also meeting physical activity and sleep guidelines so that they achieve a holistic sense of wellbeing.

Keywords: adolescents; screen time; wellbeing.

Figure 1

A schematic of the identification and selection of studies for the present narrative review is adapted from Ferrari [12]. The values in the figure are estimated and may not be exact. The limitations of the subjectivity of the study selected were outlined under limitations in this paper.