The Vicious Media Cycle
The chicken and egg argument continues. A new meta-analysis of 117 longitudinal studies attempts to answer the decades old question, “Does excess screen-time result in socioemotional problems in children or do socioemotional problems lead children to excess screen time?”. The study, published in the May 2025 issue of the Bulletin by the American Psychological Association, found a small but significant bidirectional relationship between screen time (and particularly video gaming) and socioemotional problems. This is not a new question. A bidirectional relationship between depressive symptoms and problematic Internet use in adolescents was previously identified by Manuel Gamez-Guadix a decade earlier. The 2014 study gave me the inspiration to create a simplified model of this phenomenon and this new study seems to support my model. I titled this simplified conceptual model as a “Cycle of Dependence”. This is a cycle of processes and outcomes that could be easily understood by patients, caregivers and clinicians and serve to inform treatment. This model diagrammed how problematic media consumption can result in a vicious cycle that keeps individuals stuck in ineffective coping means and their resulting negative life outcomes.
The cycle looks like this 1) Negative Mood States (i.e. boredom, anxiety, depression) lead to 2) Excess Media Consumption which leads to 3) Negative real life outcomes which feeds back increased negative mood states (1).
The Solution
Help individuals gain more effective ways of coping with negative mood states (parent support and counseling). Lifestyle changes to improve diet, exercise and sleep. Medication for some.
Limit media consumption to safe levels. While what is safe is not known because of individual differences, we do know what is unsafe (Gentile, 2009).
Work to actively reverse negative real life outcomes in academic, occupational and relational areas of life and promote new hobbies and interests off screen.
The LaunchPad
While the Sentinel LaunchPad can be used for the treatment of screen dependency, it can also be used for the prevention of these issues starting at an early age. Parental controls are both powerful and simple. When adding a child as a user. parents simply enter the child's birth month and year, answer some their basic questions about their schedule and the LaunchPad is automatically configured to keep the child safe from screen time excess. Daily screen time limits and use schedules for the three major uses, Education, Exploration and Entertainment are guided by professional healthcare recommendations.