Concurrent and Subsequent Associations Between Daily Digital Technology Use and High-Risk Adolescents' Mental Health Symptoms

Abstract

Adolescents are spending an unprecedented amount of time using digital technologies (especially mobile technologies), and there are concerns that adolescents' constant connectivity is associated with poor mental health, particularly among at-risk adolescents. Participants included 151 adolescents at risk for mental health problems (M_age = 13.1) who completed a baseline assessment, 30-day ecological momentary assessment, and 18 month follow-up assessment. Results from multilevel regression models showed that daily reports of both time spent using digital technologies and the number of text messages sent were associated with increased same-day attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD) symptoms. Adolescents' reported digital technology usage and text messaging across the ecological momentary assessment (EMA) period was also associated with poorer self-regulation and increases in conduct problem symptoms between the baseline and follow-up assessments.

Figure 1

Intraidividual mean (iMean) and intraindividual standard deviation (iSD) for time spent online (a) and depressive symptoms (b) across study days for a single adolescent. The iMean [x̄_j] is calculated using the formula ${\overline{x}}_j=\frac{{\sum }_{i=1}^{n_j}(x_i)}{n_j}$, where ${\sum }_{i=1}^{n_j}(x_i)$ is the sum of all daily observations [x_i] for adolescent j, and n_j is the total number of daily reports provided by adolescent j. iSD [σ_j] is calculated using the formula ${\sigma }_j=\sqrt{\frac{{\sum }_{i=1}^{n_j}{(x_i-{\overline{x}}_j)}^2}{n_j-1}}$; the iSD is the square root of the sum of squared deviations of all daily observations from the iMean $[{\sum }_{i=1}^{n_j}{(x_i-{\overline{x}}_j)}^2]$, divided by the total number of daily observations for adolescent j minus 1 [n_j − 1].