Thursday, May 25, 2006

Cell Phone Usage Predicts Teen Depression?

Filed under: Public Health

If your morning radio show hasn't already generated some predictable discussion from it, the Los Angeles Times is covering the research presented at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Toronto. (Please think very hard about that sentence.) According to the study (which has yet to be posted on PubMed)...

A survey of 575 South Korean high school students found that the top third of users - students who used their phones more than 90 times a day - frequently did so because they were unhappy or bored. They scored significantly higher on tests measuring depression and anxiety than students who used their phones a more sedate 70 times daily.

There's a lot more to be found in the full article. Setting the "heavy use" category at 90 uses/day makes sense, but that 70 uses/day doesn't count as heavy use seems a little odd. It's unclear what exactly a "use" is. If sending, receiving or just checking for a call/text message counts, then it makes a little more sense. Oh, and we can't wait to see how they logically verified that kids use their phones so much "because they were unhappy or bored."

Expect this study to come up in PTA meetings and in the references of groups whose title includes the word "concerned."

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