A cross-sectional study of screen time frequency, home media environment, and childhood depression

Depression is a major public health concern for children. Emergence of early depressive symptoms in childhood are predictive of more intense depression, diminished health outcomes, and development of other co-morbidities later in life. Because children are exposed to digital technologies at young ages, excessive screen time has been studied as a potential predictor of depression. Several studies have shown that for each additional hour of screen time, a child’s odds for depression increase. Additionally, the home media environment has been shown to substantially increase the frequency of screen use among children. Therefore, the primary research objective was to determine if more screen time was correlated with higher rates of depression, as measured by the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI). The secondary research objective was to investigate whether the presence of electronics in the child’s bedroom is associated with higher CDI scores. Our data showed that screen time frequency was not correlated with depression. However, children who slept with a video game console in their bedroom reported significantly higher CDI scores than children who did not. In conclusion, our findings merit further research of the home media environment and contributes to the current literature aiming to establish causal links between screen time and childhood depression.