Screen-time significantly impacts adolescents' ability to assess face-to-face nonverbal social and emotional cues

This study assesses the potential impacts from pervasive use of screen-based media and digital communications tools on preteens' understanding of nonverbal emotional cues. The authors were particularly interested in learning whether or not preteens' skills in reading human emotions may be negatively impacted by their immersion in communications technologies without direct human face-to-face interactions.

Participants were selected from the same public school and included 105 sixth graders (average age=11.8 years). The study employed an experimental design within a naturally occurring setting, in this case a five-day nature camp, comparing camp participants with a control peer group who maintained their normal activities, including digital media use, over the same period of time. For the experimental camp group (n=51), no digital media or screen-time was allowed during students' stay at the camp. The control group (n=54) was allowed to engage with digital media as they normally would and no residential component was included. Gender ratio was nearly equal for each group. Combined, the groups' ethnicity make-up included: white (n=37); Hispanic (n=18); African American (n=2); Asian (n=28); other/mixed (n=20). Both groups were given a pre and post-test related to nonverbal social cues taken from the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Behavior (DANVA2) (Nowicki & Carton, 1993) and The Child and Adolescent Social Perception Measure (CASP).

As a part of the pre-test component, all students were asked to estimate their screen-time use. On average, students reported spending 4.5 hours per day outside of school engaging with some form of digital media. Authors were interested in understanding how this screen-time impacted students' ability to socially engage with others, particularly face-to face and in real-time. The outdoor nature camp served as a natural setting to examine how the absence of media consumption might influence students' socialization skills. Students at the camp engaged in outdoor learning and recreation activities such as hiking and working together to learn about ecosystems and develop wilderness survival skills.