A Large-Scale Test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis
Przybylski and Weinstein tested the assumption underneath most screen-time advice, that more use means worse mental wellbeing, using a representative sample of more than a hundred thousand English adolescents and an analysis plan registered before they looked at the data. The relationship they found is not a straight line but a curve. Wellbeing rises with moderate use and only declines beyond a certain point, which is why they call it the Goldilocks hypothesis: too little is as unhelpful as too much, and the middle is where the best outcomes sit. The turning point also differed depending on when the use happened, being higher at weekends than on school days, which suggests what matters is what the technology displaces rather than the technology itself. Their conclusion is that moderate use is not intrinsically harmful and may be an advantage in a connected world. The study is observational, so it describes a pattern rather than establishing a cause, and this vault cites it against blanket limits.
Przybylski and Weinstein tested the assumption underneath most screen-time advice, that more use means worse mental wellbeing, using a representative sample of more than a hundred thousand English adolescents and an analysis plan registered before they looked at the data. The relationship they found is not a straight line but a curve. Wellbeing rises with moderate use and only declines beyond a certain point, which is why they call it the Goldilocks hypothesis: too little is as unhelpful as too much, and the middle is where the best outcomes sit. The turning point also differed depending on when the use happened, being higher at weekends than on school days, which suggests what matters is what the technology displaces rather than the technology itself. Their conclusion is that moderate use is not intrinsically harmful and may be an advantage in a connected world. The study is observational, so it describes a pattern rather than establishing a cause, and this vault cites it against blanket limits.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Przybylski, A. K. & Weinstein, N. (2017). “A large-scale test of the Goldilocks hypothesis.” Psychological Science, 28(2), 204-215. n = 120,115.
Where we use it
- Both Sides of the Screen-Time Argument, Why We Look
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616678438
DOI: 10.1177/0956797616678438