Abstract
We examine the effect of screen-based activities on obesity and mental well-being for children, using a large survey dataset representative of the UK population and an event study model that exploits exogenous variation in the entry date of the digital television transition in the UK. The digital transition increased the number of available free television channels from 5 to 40, leading to a rise in television viewing time. Our results show that receiving access to digital television signal considerably increases the mental health total difficulties score among children, and that this impact grows over time. We also find suggestive evidence that the digital transition could have increased BMI for children. Underlying the net effects appear to be decreases in participation in social and physical activities.
Highlights
Obesity and mental health problems among children have considerably increased during the last decades in most high-income countries (OECD, 2019a; 2019b).1 This raises important societal concerns, first, in light of the associated disease burden itself, and beyond, due to adverse effects on educational performance (Currie, 2009; Currie and Stabile, 2006), future labour market outcomes (Fletcher, 2014; Lundborg et al, 2014; Smith, 2009) and life expectancy (Frijters et al, 2010), among others
We use as dependent variable the average television viewing time per week by children in a region, and as independent variables a set of event dummies indicating the year relative to the switchover date in a region, year–week dummy variables to account for the fact that our time unit of analysis is at the week level, regional fixed effects
The digital switchover consisted in the transformation of every television transmitter in the UK to cease the broadcast of analogue television signal and start the provision of high power digital signal
Summary
Obesity and mental health problems among children have considerably increased during the last decades in most high-income countries (OECD, 2019a; 2019b). This raises important societal concerns, first, in light of the associated disease burden itself, and beyond, due to adverse effects on educational performance (Currie, 2009; Currie and Stabile, 2006), future labour market outcomes (Fletcher, 2014; Lundborg et al, 2014; Smith, 2009) and life expectancy (Frijters et al, 2010), among others. While there exists a significant and extensively reviewed literature that has empirically analysed the relationships between TV viewing and either overweight (Biddle et al, 2017; Ghobadi et al, 2018; Tripathi and Mishra, 2020; Zhang et al, 2016) or mental health (Dennison et al, 2016; Dickson et al, 2018) in children and adolescents, the existing evidence is, as the here-cited reviews underline, dominated by either cross-sectional evidence that is remarkably mixed in terms of the size and significance of the estimated relationship, or based on small-scale, hard-to-generalize experimental intervention studies Taken together, this leaves the question of a causal, population-level effect of TV viewing still widely open. The suggested mechanisms behind the potential adverse mental health outcomes comprise: TV watching increasing physical inactivity and/or sedentary time, which in turn harms mental well-being (Harvey et al, 2010; Lechner, 2009; Lubans et al, 2016); TV viewing contributing to weight gain and unfavourable body composition, provoking weight-based bullying, teasing, stigmatization, and poor mental health (Nikolaou, 2017; Russell-Mayhew et al, 2012); and the sedentary behaviour associated with TV viewing increasing the intake of unhealthy food and beverages (Chou et al, 2008; Hobbs et al, 2015), which harms children’s and adolescents’ psychological mood (Jacka and Berk, 2007; van Strien et al, 2013)
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