Worries of widespread 'tech addiction' may be overblown, says study
Parents, take it easy if your kids are spending more time on
various screens. New research claims that parental restrictions on tech use
have little lasting effect into adulthood and fears of widespread and
long-lasting tech addiction may be overblown.
The study is among the firsts to examine how digital technology use
evolves from childhood to adulthood in the mobile Internet era.
The data were gathered prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has
resulted in dramatic increases in the use of technology as
millions of students have been forced to attend school and socialise online.
But the study authors said the findings should come as some
comfort to parents worried about all that extra screen time.
"Are lots of people getting addicted to tech as teenagers and
staying addicted as young adults? The answer from our research is 'no',"
said lead author Stefanie Mollborn, a professor of sociology at the Institute
of Behavioral Science at University of Colorado Boulder in the US. "We
found that there is only a weak relationship between early technology use and
later technology use, and what we do as parents matters less than most of us
believe it will".
Published in Advances in Life Course Research, the paper is part
of a four-year National Science Foundation-funded project aimed at exploring
how the mobile Internet age truly is shaping America's youth.
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