Wii and Ennui: Media Use and Child Mental Health

US kids spend almost eight hours a day surfing the web, watching TV, playing video games or using their mobile devices, according to a new report issued Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The report, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year- Olds, was a nationally representative survey of media use in 2,000 children.

The raw numbers are just staggering: The average American child consumes media 53 hours a week. This was, not surprisingly, a sharp increase over what Kaiser found in similar surveys 5 and 10 years ago. The New York Times coverage captured the gist of the results: If your kids are awake, they're probably online.

There are many sides to the issue of how our children spend their time. It speaks to the society we already are, the society we are likely to become, as well as the society we want to become.

I just want to speak to one issue that is important to me as a researcher, parent, and citizen -- whether this heavy media use has negative implications for the mental health of our children.

A sidelight of the Kaiser study considered the connection between the "dose" of media use and the well-being of the child. The researchers contrasted heavy media users (children using media 16hrs a day; believe it or not, there was an appreciable subsample of such children) with other children. Importantly, heavy users were less likely to report feeling happy in school during the last year than lighter media users. Moreover, these heavy users were also more likely to report often feeling sad or unhappy.

The researchers were quick to point out that we don't know from their data if heavy media use is the cause or the effect of a child's discontent. They are correct. However, I submit that other data do suggest that Wii may indeed precede and possibly cause ennui. For example an earlier study in the Archives of General Psychiatry found children who were initially heavier users of media (including more hours of television watching) were more depressed seven years later.

It is tempting to see the cell phone, the Wii, the computer, and the iPod as relatively benign, or at worst mildly annoying. These devices are now part of life's constant backdrop, like wallpaper we don't notice. At the same time, evidence is beginning to mount that heavy media use may be detrimental to the mental health of our children.

Yes, we need more research. The scientist in me would love gold-standard studies that better establish causation. All it would require is randomly assignnig different groups of children to different media lifestyles and looking for sustained impacts on well-being. Obviously don't hold your breath for those data because of the ethical and practical barriers to carrying out that kind of research with real children. Like it or not, citizens, parents, and researchers will have to draw conclusions and form a plan of action based on an imperfect database. In my view what we know already is sufficient cause for concern.