For those downvoting: please explain why, and don't just downvote as a knee-jerk reaction to the bonkers-sounding headline. The purpose of science is not to reinforce conventional wisdom.

If this is true, we need to understand why.

If it is not, we need to understand why.

I'm not familiar with Pediatric Exercise Science as a journal, but from a quick lookup it seems legit enough, so I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand just because it doesn't jibe with my biases.

I've only had time to skim the paper itself. Nothing jumps out at me as outrageous or delegitimizing, though I am left with questions about the self-reporting, and the conclusions from the paper seem to be far less conclusive that the article headline suggests (as usual...).

I also wonder how "screen time" from the 2008 and 2015 data sets would realistically compare to "screen time" today. The digital landscape has changed a lot in the past 18 years. I am older than the Internet, and my experience with computers as a teenager was very different from today's teenagers'. The majority of my screen time at that age involved a lot of problem solving and creativity. I don't think that's the lion's share of screen time today, but it's certainly not absent either.

But also more anxiety, shorter attention spans, and brain rot.

(According to my own anecdotal evidence)