21 Long-term Digital Screen Exposure and Mental Well-being: A Cross-modal Analysis of University Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated an unprecedented shift to online learning and remote work, drastically increasing digital screen exposure among university students. Here we use passive sensing data from smartphones, wearable devices, and a machine learning-based chemical transport model to quantify the global and regional changes in screen time and their associated impacts on student mental well-being. We find that the pandemic increased annual mean daily screen time worldwide by 2.15 hours (95% confidence interval, 1.89–2.41 hours). East Asia saw the largest increase in annual mean exposure (3.08 hours; 2.72–3.44 hours), but significant increases were also observed in North America (1.91 hours; 1.62–2.20 hours) and Europe (1.58 hours; 1.32–1.84 hours) due to widespread lockdown policies. Annual mean screen exposure for university students in China increased by 3.52 hours (3.10–3.94 hours). We find that 412 million (355–469 million) students in these regions were exposed to daily screen times exceeding the recommended psychological "safe" threshold. We estimate that 8,700 (6,500–10,900) acute cases of anxiety and 95,300 (72,800–117,900) chronic cases of depression were attributable to this increased screen exposure. Our results highlight the far-reaching mental health burden that abrupt, large-scale shifts in digital lifestyle can impose, underscoring the need for new design paradigms and digital wellness interventions.