I am going to say a dirty word, screen time.

That simple and suddenly terrifying word includes all the hours that you spend streaming movies, playing video games,

especially the hours you spend caught in the vortex of social media and news and communication that gushes from your phone.

Everyone seems to have something to say about screen time, from the American Academy of Pediatrics

to religious and educational leaders to the New York Times opinion section, especially the New York Times

opinion section. Our own devices scold us with reminders to get off

Instagram to hold the phone further away to avoid eye strain.

If you have an iPhone, you know that it tracks the hours you spend on it every day and then

makes a point to tell you that number, that always surprisingly large number.

The people we are most worried about when it comes to screen time are children and teenagers.

Parents around the world are in a full-on panic about the

relationship between screen time and mental health in part because there is

new scientific evidence on this relationship.

What we've observed from around 2014 was high school kids.

We were seeing a rise in their use of internet and smartphones and so on.

And a big rise in their anxiety levels, depression levels, all kinds of things.

That sounds terrible.

But is the case against screen time really that clear cut? Today on for economics radio we will

hear the evidence and some challenges to the evidence. It's very easy to fool

yourself as an analyst.

We'll also discuss the incentives at play.

That's how op-eds work.

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