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Gambling, Gaming & Technology Use Community of Interest

The Gambling, Gaming & Technology Use Community of Interest brings together addiction and mental health service providers, researchers and subject matter experts in the fields of gambling, technology/Internet use and video gaming to collaborate and share knowledge on emerging trends and clinical best practices.

Tagged With "Smartphone"

Discussion Topic

CBC News Article: Tech companies encourage us to be smart about phones

Registered Member ·
This newly released CBC News article discusses new Smartphone management tools that enable users to get daily and weekly activity reports about the total time they spend in each app, their usage and notifications as well as the ability for parents to put controls on usage. Featured in the article, @Registered Member points out that this may be one avenue to help reduce or minimize Smartphone use but that there are also other options such as turning off notifications and scheduling...
Discussion Topic

The first long-term study on how screen time affects children's brains

Registered Member ·
The National Institutes of Health are currently conducting a study on over 11,000 children to look at the long-term effects of screen time. Preliminary findings show that children who use screens for more than 2 hours a day score lower on language and thinking skills. It will be interesting to see what else is uncovered as this study continues, including whether changes are dependent on what the screen is being used for and/or on the child's developmental stage. Read the full article here .
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Re: The first long-term study on how screen time affects children's brains

Registered Member ·
It will be interesting to see if they control for things like income and other social determinants of health. I have a sense that it might be more likely for parents with fewer resources to use the phone/TV as a coping strategy, especially if they don't have as much support as other more affluent parents.
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Re: The first long-term study on how screen time affects children's brains

Registered Member ·
Hi Nimira, You make an excellent point. Another thing to consider, on the opposite spectrum, is that many middle class to upper class schools now utilize tablets and laptops as part of the school curriculum. Does the content matter? Or is it just screen time. I wonder if the added family resources outside of school, that may support vacations, hobbies and sports (events away from screen time) and resources that support enhanced learning, is large enough to combat the effects of increased...
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Re: The first long-term study on how screen time affects children's brains

Registered Member ·
I was just about to say that Aaron! Content matters! This has been an ongoing debate and I'm afraid I'm on the pro-screen time. I find these studies skewed... "If you give a child an app where they play with virtual Legos, virtual blocks, and stack them, and then put real blocks in front of them, they start all over," Why would you test block-building capacity and say this skill isn't transferable when using real blocks? Seems pretty obvious. I'm sure if you tested for non gross motor skills...
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Re: CBC News Article: Tech companies encourage us to be smart about phones

Registered Member ·
Thanks for sharing, Matt! Just to add to this discussion - an article published yesterday in TechCrunch announces that Facebook and Instragram's new "digital well-being screen-time management dashboards" have been launched in the US. This dashboard shows how many minutes people use each of these apps per day and their average use in a week. It also allows users to mute notifications and set daily usage limits, after which a notification will come up to say they have surpassed the limit. What...
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Re: CBC News Article: Tech companies encourage us to be smart about phones

Registered Member ·
Thanks for sharing this article, Tiffany. I think tracking and monitoring usage is a good first step to increasing self awareness around the possibility of over-usage and can allow people to start questioning whether their level of use is causing problems at all. There are also other apps (e.g., Rescue Time, Cold Turkey, Self Control, etc.) that help capture this info and/or allow users to block certain websites to help minimize use.
Discussion Topic

Webinar Recording (+ answers to your questions) - Teens and Smartphones

Registered Member ·
Thank you to all of you who came to this weeks' webinar: Teens and Smartphones: Exploring young peoples’ views of smartphone etiquette, ‘addiction’ and healthy tech use habits. You can watch a recording and download the slides here by toggling to the 'Archive' tab on this page (the recording begins around the five-minute mark). I answered several of your questions during the session but wasn't able to answer all questions so have tried to do so below. Thanks again to everyone who came, it...
Discussion Topic

Internet safety tips for tweens, teens, parents and caregivers

Registered Member ·
I'm always on the lookout for accessible resources that are useful for young people and their families/caregivers and professionals who work with families. Below are some links to a great blog series from the creators of Bark, an app for families and schools that can monitor and alert adults about risky or concerning activity on a young person's smartphone. Whilst the Bark app appears to currently only be available in the U.S, their team runs an interesting blog series with videos and linked...
Discussion Topic

Childhood Experiences and Problematic Smartphone Use: Potential public health implications?

Registered Member ·
A recent study by Forster et al. (2021) looked at the impact of adverse childhood experiences (i.e. witnessing domestic violence, parent alcohol and drug use, etc) on problematic smartphone use later on in life. The authors conducted surveys on college students which explored their exposure to adverse childhood experiences and assessed their level of problematic smartphone use. They found that students with increased exposure to adverse childhood events were at greater risk for problematic...
Discussion Topic

Is Digital Detoxing actually effective? What does the research say?

Registered Member ·
At this point I think we’ve all heard of the impacts of smartphone use on mental health. Different strategies have been suggested as ways to reduce the negative impacts of smartphone use. One of the popular way people have tried to reduce their smartphone use is through “digital detoxing”. Digital detoxing has been loosely defined as spending time away from electronic devices such as smartphone to help promote wellbeing. But does it actually work? A recent article by Radtke et al (2022)...
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