Study conducted summer of 2021 titled, "The Correlation Between Screen Time and Level of Social Anxiety in College Students" examining the relationship between total time spent on electronic devices and levels of social anxiety.
Research Design
Students at California State University, Stanislaus, were collected online (N= 39) through a cloud research database, SONA. SONA took participants to the assessment created on Qualtrics, which gathered: participants screen time with two open ended questions, the number of hours per day and number of days per week electronic media was used. After testing for screen time, social anxiety was measured using the Liebowitz Scale, which assesses the way social anxiety plays a role in a person’s life across a variety of situations. We hypothesized that if daily screen time increased, then social anxiety scores would also increase.
A Pearson’s correlation coefficient was conducted using SPSS to examine the relationship between total weekly screen-time (M = 38.79, SD = 22.73) and total social anxiety scores (M = 105.64, SD = 24.63). There was no statistically significant relationship between total screen-time and social anxiety scores; r(37) = .05, p = .77.
Implications
The results indicate the hypothesis was not supported. Previous research consistently showed a significant correlation between depression and screen time, indicating a need to explore further. Future research should look to have an increased sample size, double to triple the amount used in the present study. Additionally, collecting information regarding the purpose of electronic media use, and type of media used should be considered.
An extraneous variable that we did not control for that may have played a role in anxiety levels was COVID-19.
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