A psychologist checks the studies behind the scary headlines
Etchells got into this field out of irritation. In 2011 he read a headline claiming computer games give children "dementia," went to the pub with colleagues and ranted about it, and one of them told him to go and do the research. He did. Unlocked applies the same habit to screen time: find the headline, find the study, and see whether one supports the other.
Pete Etchells. Photo from Bath Spa University.
Most of the evidence for harm is correlation, and the effects are small
His central finding is that much of the screen-time research comes from large surveys that ask people how much they use screens and how they feel, then look for links. That cannot tell you which way the arrow points: a lonely or anxious teen may spend more time on a phone, rather than the phone causing it. And the links are small. One reanalysis he cites found that less than half a percent of the depressive symptoms a teenage girl reports can be predicted from how much social media she says she uses.
He also flags what he calls the jingle-jangle problem. Researchers say "social media" when they mean Instagram, and use "screen time," "social media" and "social networking" as if they were the same thing. A finding about one is often reported as a finding about all of them.
Sleep, attention and addiction each get their own chapter
Etchells goes through the big claims one at a time. Screens wrecking attention spans: unlikely, on the evidence. Screens and teen sleep: sometimes a problem, depending on what the teen is doing and when. Screen "addiction" as a clinical condition: he does not think the evidence supports it. He is careful to say that a lack of strong evidence for harm is not proof of safety, and that "we haven't got the data" is the answer to some questions.
He argues the panic has costs. South Korea's 2011 "Cinderella law" banned under-16s from online games between midnight and 6am. One analysis found it added about 1.5 minutes of sleep a night.
His own teenage blog is part of the story
Etchells mixes the statistics with his own life. As a teenager whose father had died, he poured his feelings into a LiveJournal blog and found people going through the same thing. That support came through a screen. His point is the question that matters most to a parent: "why do some people thrive online and others struggle?" And when adults tell kids to get off screens and go outside, he notes, "increasingly, there isn't anywhere 'outside' for them to go."
From the publisher's Amazon page.
Dense in places, and it gives you no four simple rules
The trade for careful science is that the book does not hand parents a short list of rules. Reviewers called it nuanced and constructive, and the statistics chapters ask for attention. The advice on spending screen time better, the second half of the subtitle, is where parents get practical steps. Read it beside The Anxious Generation and decide for your own kid.
Hear him talk it through
Etchells talked about phones and addiction on the Leighton Night podcast the week Unlocked came out:
Read it with
Etchells's first book, Lost in a Good Game, is about video games and grief. For the other side of the debate, read Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation; for a parent's guide built on the same middle ground, Anya Kamenetz's The Art of Screen Time.
