About 40% of kids aged 8-15 have low “digital well-being scores,”
characterized by higher stress levels, poorer sleep and lower moods than others, according to research from online safety platform Aura.
What’s “most concerning,” though, is
that the situation gets worse with age, as Aura reports 60% of 16- to 17-year-olds have low digital well-being.
“What we observed among those with low digital well-being scores is
hypervigilant, restless device use that disrupts other aspects of life,” Dr. Scott Kollins, Aura’s chief medical officer, said in a statement. “As kids and teens mature and they gain more
freedom, digital well-being plummets, suggesting an inability to self-regulate unhealthy digital behaviors.”
Aura said that, for those with low digital well-being, it’s
“about habits, not just hours,” “use is more fragmented and late night,” and “disengagement takes longer.”
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The low digital well-being group, Aura
reported,
check their phones seven times more, send five times more messages and switch apps three times more than peers who have higher well-being scores.spend half as long
in average per digital session than others — but 300% more time on devices overnight.take twice as long to fully disengage from devices after bedtime.
The Digital
Well-being Score is based on research by Aura’s own team of clinical psychologists and a study from Talker Research.
Launched Monday at the Common Sense Media Summit for Kids and
Families in San Francisco, the Digital Well-being Score has been added to the Aura Parents monitoring app, which is available on a subscription basis starting at $10 per month.
Over the first
three days of use, Aura explained in a press release, a personalized baseline value gets established for every child. Then, the app continually monitors behaviors and calculates a rolling seven-day
average Digital Well-being Score, comparing their recent behavior to the baseline. “This allows parents to better understand when a low score indicates a blip in behavior or truly requires their
attention,” Aura said.
The company cautioned, however, that “the Digital Well-being Score is not a mental health tool. It does not diagnose conditions or measure a child’s
emotions. If a child’s score is low, it means their device habits resemble those of kids and teens in our research who reported experiencing high stress, poor sleep, low moods or more
isolation.”