Supervised and Unsupervised Screentime and its Association with Physical Health, Mental Health and Behavior of Schoolgoing Children in Dhaka, Bangladesh: A Cross-Sectional Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Bangladeshi children are highly dependent on digital screens, which leads to various mental, physical and psychosocial health concerns. Despite the important influence of parental supervision, there is scarcity of research regarding the correlation between parental supervision of screen time and health indicators of Dhaka schoolchildren. OBJECTIVE This study aims to take a first step towards research in the area of parental supervision of screentime and its association with the physical health, mental health and behavioral indicators of Dhaka schoolchildren. METHODS This cross-sectional descriptive study of 420 children (and parents), grades 2-8 and ages 6-14, enrolled participants via stratified random sampling across three English-medium and three Bangla-medium schools in Dhaka city. Data was collected through a semi-structured questionnaires, anthropometry measurements, and Bangla-validated versions of the Strength & Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Scale (PSQI), and Spencer Children Anxiety Scale (SCAS). RESULTS Around 56% of enrolled children used screens without any parental supervision. English medium students had significantly more screen time than Bangla medium students (5.5 vs. 3.7 hrs, p < 0.001). Among those who reported headaches, the proportion of unsupervised children was significantly higher than that of supervised (52.1% vs. 47.9%, p < 0.003). Other observed differences in physical symptoms between supervised and unsupervised groups did not prove significant. The most commonly reported physical symptoms were blurred vision (93.1%), abdominal pain (81.2%) and headaches (80%). Supervised children had higher average sleep durations than the unsupervised (7.7 hrs vs. 7.4 hrs, p < 0.05). Furthermore, 6 children reported overall anxiety on the SCAS, only 1 of whom was unsupervised. No statistically significant differences were found between the supervised and unsupervised groups for overall SDQ, PSQI and SCAS scores. Most commonly observed behavioral problems were conduct problems (28.3%) and peer problems (28.8%). CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest lack of screentime supervision may be weakly associated with some negative health effects in young children. Further study is needed to demonstrate causal mechanisms, identify best interventions, and the role of mediators and moderators in household, surroundings and school. Such research is vital to develop appropriate guidelines for children’s screentime usage. CLINICALTRIAL