Link to more depressive symptoms during early adolescence could potentially be due to shorter sleep and worse white matter organization
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, July 3, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Too much screen time in late childhood is associated with developmental changes in the brain, leading to more depressive symptoms in early adolescence, according to a study published online June 23 in JAMA Pediatrics.
João Paulo Lima Santos, M.D., from the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues conducted a prospective study to examine whether the association between screen time during late childhood (age 9 to 10 years) and depressive symptoms in early adolescence (age 11 to 13 years) could be explained by effects of screen time on sleep and white matter integrity. The analysis included 976 participants in the Adolescent Behavior Cognitive Development Study.
The researchers found that each additional hour of daily screen time at age 9 to 10 years was associated with a 0.12-point increase in the Child Behavior Checklist depressive score at age 11 to 13 years. At 11 to 13 years, shorter sleep duration and worse cingulum bundle organization (greater orientation dispersion index) mediated the association between more screen time and more depressive symptoms by 36.4 percent.
“Those of us who see kids as teenagers in pediatric neurology and even in general pediatrics, we know that this is happening,” Ivan Pavkovic, M.D., an attending pediatric neurologist from the Cohen Children’s Medical Center in Queens, New York City, said in a statement. “We see every day in clinic that kids are on their screens way more for school and for social activities, that they’re not sleeping enough. It’s a nationwide epidemic of lack of sleep.”
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