Is "screen time" bad?

As a parent, I wonder if screen time is bad. I came across this study, that seems to be widely debated.

The study basically analysed some large datasets, to examine whether screen time negatively affected teens (controlling for various factors).

What they found: basically almost no effect.

Caveats:

• "screen time" is a huge category: it could include social media doomscrolling, but it could also include doing homework on a computer.

• also, the study didn’t separate how screen time may affect different teens differently (e.g. boy vs girl, different ages).

Subsequent papers have delved deeper, and indeed found not all screen time is harmless.

Thoughts:

1. screen time per se is not necessarily good or bad. We need to look into the specific screen activity.

2. I still worry about eye sight though (kids staring at screens will have worse eyesight?). Need to explore more papers!