Considering All of the Data on Digital-Media Use and Depressive Symptoms: Response to Ophir, Lipshits-Braziler, and Rosenberg (2020)

Abstract

We have documented increases since 2012 in depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide and identified associations between digital-media use and depressive symptoms and suicide-related outcomes across two data sets: Monitoring the Future (MtF) and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS). Ophir, Lipshits-Braziler, and Rosenberg’s criticisms of the MtF data (this issue; pp. 374–378) are addressed by the YRBSS data, which included a measure of digital-media use in hours. Ophir et al. assumed that the displacement of nonscreen activities by screen activities occurs only at the individual level, whereas in fact, time displacement at the group or cohort level may be more important. Some discrepancies in the literature can be traced to the use of percentage variance explained; in fact, heavy (vs. light) digital-media users are considerably more likely (often twice as likely) to be depressed or low in well-being across several large data sets.