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Exposure to(1) more television and other electronic media(2) during the teenage years appears to be associated with(3) developing(4) depression(5) symptoms(6) in young adulthood(7), especially among men, according to(8) a report in the February issue of Archives(9) of General Psychiatry(10), one of the JAMA(11)/Archives journals.

Depression, the leading cause(12) of non-fatal(13) disability(14) worldwide(15), commonly(16) begins in adolescence(17) or young adulthood, according to background information in the article. "The development(18) of depression in adolescence may be understood as a biopsychosocial(19), multifactorial(20) process influenced by risk and protective(21) factors including temperament(22), genetic heritability(23), parenting style(24), cognitive vulnerability(25), stressors(26) (e.g., trauma exposure(27) or poverty) and interpersonal relationships(28)," the authors write. Media exposure is another plausible(29) influence, since teens are exposed to an average of eight and one-half hours of electronic media per day.

Brian A. Primack, M.D. (30), Ed.M. (31), M.S. (32), of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues(33) used data from the National Longitudinal(34) Survey of Adolescent(35) Health (Add Health) to determine exposure to electronic media among 4,142 adolescents(36) who were not depressed(37) at the beginning of the study in 1995. The teens were asked how many hours they had spent during the last week watching television or videocassettes(38), playing computer games or listening to the radio (the survey was conducted before DVDs or the Internet(39) became widely used). They reported an average of 5.68 hours of media exposure per day, including 2.3 hours of television, 0.62 hours of videocassettes, 0.41 hours of computer games and 2.34 hours of radio.