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In a nutshell
- Teens who spend more than 2 hours on screens during weekdays face double the risk of anxiety and are four times more likely to experience emotional and behavioral problems.
- Passive scrolling is more harmful than active engagement like posting or commenting – quality of screen time matters as much as quantity.
- Parents should focus on both limiting total screen time and encouraging more structured activities during weekdays, when excessive screen use has the strongest negative associations with mental health.
LONDON, Ontario — Many parents fret about their teenagers’ screen habits. Now, science gives them concrete reasons to worry: teens who spend more than two hours on screens during weekdays face double the risk of anxiety and four times the likelihood of emotional and behavioral problems.
The startling finding comes out of Western University in Canada, where scientists discovered that a whopping 45% of “normal” teens—those without any pre-existing conditions—reported anxiety levels that doctors would consider clinically significant. But what really caught researchers’ attention wasn’t just screen time itself, but what teens were doing on those screens.
The Hidden Danger of Passive Scrolling
The study, published in Computers in Human Behavior, examined 580 adolescents between ages 12-17, finding that passive social media consumption had more harmful effects than other screen activities.
What’s particularly troubling is how few teens follow recommended guidelines. The study found just 30.7% of adolescents stayed under the two-hour daily limit during weekdays. Weekend numbers were even worse—only 14.3% kept their screen time in check when school was out.
Teen screen use exploded during COVID lockdowns, and those elevated levels haven’t dropped even as life returned to normal. Many teenagers turned to social media to feel connected during isolation, creating habits that stuck around long after restrictions lifted.
The researchers dug deeper, separating different kinds of screen behaviors. Creating content showed some negative effects, but passive consumption—scrolling without commenting, posting, or otherwise engaging—emerged as especially damaging to mental wellbeing. The more common term for this behavior is “doomscrolling.”
Such exposures can foster negative social comparisons, reinforcing low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, envy, anxiety, depression, and loneliness, all of which contribute emotional and behavioral dysregulation, according to the study.
Weekday vs. Weekend Screen Time
Scientists also revealed an interesting pattern: excessive screen time on school days linked more strongly to mental health problems than weekend overuse. This might be because high weekday screen use indicates a less structured daily life with fewer offline activities.
Age factored in as well. Older teens spent more time passively scrolling and posting content than younger adolescents did. Gender differences were minimal regarding screen habits, though girls reported higher anxiety levels overall.
Emma Duerden, who led the study, and her team concluded that these findings support current recommendations limiting recreational screen time to about two hours daily for teenagers.
“In past studies, we’ve shown some teens reporting 15 hours of screen time a day. They wake up, go on a screen and stay the whole day,” Duerden says in a statement. “But reducing cell phone use is easier said than done. I think cell phone bans in schools are key. Getting outside and being part of the real world is also important. We all just need to take a break from our phones for our mental and overall well-being.”
Quality Matters as Much as Quantity
The paper stresses that how teens use screens matters as much as how long they’re on them. While passive consumption showed strong negative effects, active digital engagement caused less harm.
“Although spending extended hours on content creation still increased some mental health risk in our study, active social media engagement, such as posting, commenting, and interacting with peers, could be associated with more positive emotions, greater well-being and increased social support,” the authors write.
Practical Advice for Parents
For concerned parents, the message is twofold: limit total screen time, but also pay attention to how teens use their devices. Encouraging active rather than passive digital engagement could make a difference. Just as important is maintaining structure and offline activities in teens’ daily routines.
The bottom line? Different screen behaviors affect different aspects of mental health. Weekday screen overuse linked most strongly to anxiety, while passive scrolling connected most directly to broader emotional and behavioral problems.
Paper Summary
Methodology
Researchers recruited 580 adolescents aged 12-17 years through the online platform Prolific between December 2022 and August 2023. Participants completed questionnaires about their demographic information, pre-existing conditions (like ADHD or autism), screen use behaviors, and mental health. Screen behaviors were measured using the SCREENS-Q questionnaire, which assessed frequent screen use, overall time spent, passive scrolling, and content posting. Mental health was evaluated using the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The study analyzed both quantitative aspects (time spent) and qualitative aspects (screen behaviors) of adolescents’ screen use in relation to their mental health outcomes.
Results
The study found that only 30.7% of adolescents stayed under the recommended two-hour screen time limit on weekdays, dropping to 14.3% on weekends. About 45% of adolescents without pre-existing conditions reported clinically elevated anxiety levels. Exceeding two hours of screen time on weekdays doubled the odds of clinical anxiety (OR=2.14) and quadrupled the odds of emotional/behavioral difficulties (OR=4.02). Among different screen behaviors, passive scrolling had the strongest negative association with mental health outcomes, even after controlling for age, gender, and pre-existing vulnerabilities. Older adolescents spent more time on passive scrolling and content posting than younger adolescents. The study also found that 72% of adolescents with pre-existing conditions like ADHD or autism showed clinically elevated anxiety, compared to 44.5% of those without such conditions.
Limitations
The researchers acknowledged several limitations, including potential endogeneity and unmeasured confounding factors such as pandemic-related stress that might have contributed to both increased screen use and mental health issues. The study could not establish causality, only associations – it’s unclear whether excessive screen use leads to mental health problems or if adolescents with existing mental health challenges are more likely to engage in certain screen behaviors. The online data collection methods may have introduced reliability concerns or biases and excluded segments of the population without internet access. The self-reported measures from adolescents, while valuable, may have been influenced by the nature of online surveys, potentially affecting the validity of responses.
Funding/Disclosures
The study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The authors declared no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work.
Publication Information
The study titled “Screen time woes: Social media posting, scrolling, externalizing behaviors, and anxiety in adolescents” was conducted by Eun Jung Choi, Ella Christiaans, and Emma G. Duerden from Western University in Canada. It was published in Computers in Human Behavior (Volume 170, 2025) and became available online on May 5, 2025. The research is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.
