Influence of screen time during COVID-19 on health-related quality of life of early adolescents

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of screen time during COVID-19 on the physical and mental domains of the health-related quality of life of early adolescents. A total of 860 early adolescents were recruited. The 36-Item Short Form Health Survey was used to measure their health-related quality of life. The early adolescents reported their average daily time spent using smartphones and computers and watching television over the previous week. The results show that most early adolescents, on average, spent less than 1 h to more than 4 h per day during COVID-19 using smartphones (n = 833, 96.9%) and computers (n = 783, 91.0%), and watching television (n = 804, 93.5%), respectively. Though early male and female adolescents spent a similar amount of time daily on average using smartphones, early male adolescents spent more time using computers and watching television than early female adolescents and reported a significantly lower mean score for three out of the eight scales in the physical and mental domains of health-related quality of life. While health-related quality of life of early female adolescents was negatively associated with time spent using smartphones only, early male adolescents were adversely affected by the time spent using smartphones and computers and watching television (p < 0.05). Therefore, early adolescents who spent more time using display devices during COVID-19 had significantly poorer outcomes in their health-related quality of life, and gender difference was found in the influence of screen time on health-related quality of life.