Thomee_Harenstam_Hagberg_2011

The study group consisted of young adults 20-24 years old (n = 4156), who responded to a questionnaire at baseline and 1-year follow-up. Mobile phone exposure variables included frequency of use, but also more qualitative variables: demands on availability, perceived stressfulness of accessibility, being awakened at night by the mobile phone, and personal overuse of the mobile phone.

This study focused on individuals in their early 20’s who were given a survey to fill out during the experiment, as well as one year after the fact. The researchers studied several different metrics in the study in order to get a more well-rounded view of the phone usage of their participants.

Most investigations we have found on mobile phone use and mental health outcomes have been cross-sectional studies performed among mainly college students (e.g., [15,19-23]). It is important to examine possible associations between mobile phone use and mental health outcomes also in a more general or heterogeneous population of young adults, using a longitudinal design.

The majority of studies in primary literature that explore the relationship between phones and mental health have taken information from one demographic of participants at one static point in time, with no follow up survey. This study is based on the belief that in order to get a better idea of the true effects of phone use on mental health, you need to explore a more eclectic group of participants. Additionally, it also can provide lots of insight to follow up with participants in a long-term way as opposed to singular testing.

The frequency of mobile phone use variable had low positive correlations with all of the more qualitative mobile phone variables using Spearman correlation analysis (see Table 2). Furthermore, there were low positive (or little if any) associations between most qualitative mobile phone variables, and no association between availability demands and accessibility stress.

Reported levels of the general amount of screen time was somewhat related to the other more subjective things that the researchers studied, when analysed using the Spearman correlation analysis. There were also very slight connections between almost all of the more subjective variables. The perceived responsibility of a participant to always be reachable on their phone did not seem to have any connection to their levels of stress about being easily reached.

We have limited our study to psychosocial aspects of mobile phone use. Possible biophysical pathways due to exposure to electromagnetic fields have not been considered. Furthermore, there might be factors, e.g. individual factors or personality traits, not accounted for in our study, which co-varies with exposure variables and are “true” pathways to mental health problems

This study is more focused on learning about our behavioural and social implications and how they connect to phone use as opposed to more health-related aspects that were not studied. There also is a likely chance that researchers were unable to account for all possible contributing factors that may have implications for both the screen use and mental health behaviours.

I believe that future research in this area could most effectively be done using literature reviews and more detailed longitudinal studies, following different groups of participants and their behaviours over time. Mental health is an incredibly volatile subject and very subject to change as people go through their lives, meaning cross-sectional studies often neglect to show a well-rounded picture of an individual or their habits. Literature reviews will be useful as they can allow a glimpse into many different studies, analysing what is similar among differently designed studies, and better identify themes that may not initially seem significant.

While I was able to understand the entirety of the article, I found the data tables in the results section hard to read, as I am unfamiliar with the specific statistical methods the researchers used.