Media Use

Too much screen time can lead to sleep problems in teens. But reducing screen time and blue light exposure can resolve these problems within a week. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience investigated the effects of screen time on adolescents and saw that teens who were exposed to screen…

More TV means less sleep for preschoolers. This, according to researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The research team studied the rest and activity cycles of 470 preschoolers for 16 days. Additionally, they examined questionnaires completed by the parents about their child’s health and behavior, including how much TV…

Watching Spiderman and Antman might help you overcome your fear of bugs. Researchers from Ariel University and Bar-Ilan University say that doing so can act as exposure therapy for people who are afraid of bugs. Exposure therapy is exposing oneself to their phobia until they’re no longer afraid. With this…

As the Game of Thrones series nears its conclusion, fans are at risk of suffering from showhole depression. When you suffer from showhole depression, you experience harmful symptoms like general unhappiness and feelings of hopelessness when a favorite show ends. While this might sound ridiculous to some, the reality is…

The audio we listen to can change how we feel about ourselves. Researchers from the University of Oxford divided 135 participants into five groups. Each group heard a different set of audio instructions. Two of these groups listened to audio that encouraged participants to be kind to themselves. The remaining…

You’ve heard it many times before: “Violent video games spark aggressive behavior in players and lead to violence in real life…” But, have you ever stopped to look at the facts and consider the validity of this statement? Heather Ness, a psychology professor and blogger who specializes in the psychology…

In the digital era, both children and adults have been looking to video games for entertainment more and more often. The number of players getting involved, even when looking at a single game alone, can be staggering; for example, as of June 2018, the popular video game Fortnite had more…

People debate about whether watching violence makes us more likely to engage in violence ourselves—of which was precisely explored in the Bobo doll experiment. In this experiment, Albert Bandura and his team of researchers studied 72 kids who experienced either an aggressive or non-aggressive model. In the aggressive model, the…

Addiction is a strong word, and the scientific community has not yet determined whether individuals can be “addicted” to sites like Facebook and Instagram in the medical sense. However, whether or not an individual meets the criteria for an addiction disorder may not matter as much as the consequences of his…

Mental health is a topical concern, especially when it comes to your children’s screen usage. How much time is too much time? What type of content should I be monitoring? How do I ensure devices won’t have a negative impact on their mental health? Many parents admit they don’t know…

Despite the credentials, skills, and experience mental health professionals possess, they are often depicted as unprofessional, unhelpful, and unqualified. In many TV shows and movies, the characters who play counselors or therapists are often portrayed as unprofessional and emotional: they engage in unprofessional relationships with their clients and let their…

A recent survey found that the majority of Americans use streaming services like Netflix and Hulu in bed, and it’s disrupting their sleep. Users often don’t know when to log out of these services, which leads them to veer from their healthy nightly routines and disrupt their circadian rhythm. Instead…