Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Alejo Barbuzza | email: barbuzza.alejo@gmail.com
Alejo Barbuzza 1°2°, Maria Susana Barros 3°, Pedro van Gelderen 3°, Luis Combal 3°, Susana Giambruni 3°, Dario Alvarez Klar 3°, Fabricio Ballarini 1°
1° Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires, Av. Madero 399, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2° Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia “Prof. E. De Robertis” (IBCN), Facultad de Medicina, UBA-CONICET, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3° Red educativa iTINERE, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Screen time has been closely related to mental health according to different investigations. In particular, the results observed in adolescents show that there is a positive connection between screen time and psychological distress. Our objective as an interdisciplinary laboratory-educational network team is to elucidate the effects of screen time on mental health, find the protective variables and those that threaten it to make decisions that generate a positive impact on the mental health of students. To do this, we conducted a survey of students in the last section of secondary school of the iTINERE educational network that included validated questionnaires on generalized anxiety, depression and sleep quality. We observed that those students who had more than five hours of screen time per day had worse rates of anxiety, depression and quality of sleep than those between three and five hours, and these at their worst rates than those of less than three hours per day. In addition, it was found that depending on the gender and the amount of weekly exercise, these indices can improve or worsen. These partial results are part of an investigation not yet completed where it is expected to carry out explosions within the school to lower these rates, and to observe if said impact generates changes in creativity as a cognitive process and in grades as a measure of school performance.