toronto teenagers especially girls have better mental health when they spend less time in front of screens and more time taking part in extracurricular activities like sports and arta study published in the journal preventive medicine found that spending less than two hours per day of recreational screen time associated with higher levels of life satisfaction and optimism and lower levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms especially among girlssimilarly extracurricular participation was associated with better mental health outcomesthe findings are especially relevant now when teens may be spending more time in front of screens in their free time if access to extracurricular activities like sports and arts programs is restricted due to covid19 said the studys lead author eva oberle from university of british columbia in canadaour findings highlight extracurricular activities as an asset for teens mental wellbeing oberle addedfinding safe ways for children and teens to continue to participate in these activities during current times may be a way to reduce screen time and promote mental health and wellbeingdata for this study was drawn from a populationlevel survey involving 28712 grade 7 students from 365 schools in 27 school districtsthe researchers examined recreational screen time such as playing video games watching television browsing the internet as well as participating in outdoor extracurricular activities such as sport and art programs after schoolthey then compared its association with positive and negative mental health indicatorsthe findings showed that adolescents who participated in extracurricular activities were significantly less likely to engage in recreational screenbased activities for two or more hours after schooltaking part in extracurricular activities was associated with higher levels of life satisfaction and optimism and lower levels of anxiety and depressive symptomslonger screen time more than two hours a day was associated with lower levels of life satisfaction and optimism and higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms the study has foundfurther research is needed to examine why the negative effects of screen time were more detrimental for girls than for boys she also hopes to focus future research on the effects of different types of screen time the authors noted