Screen Time and its Correlates among College-going Young Adults in a Rural Community of Southern Andhra Pradesh

Globalization and urbanization have brought about remarkable changes in society's lifestyle. Faster economic growth and developments in recent times, especially in India, have ensured greater accessibility to electronic screen devices (ESDs). Hence, the study intended to estimate the average screen time and its correlates among young adults in a rural community.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 700 young adults aged 18-25 years from a rural community in Andhra Pradesh, South India, over 2 months. A structured, validated, and pretested "Screen Time Questionnaire" was used to collect data on socio-demographic details and screen time activity. The data were entered into MS Excel 2019 and further analyzed using SPSS software version 21. Inferential statistics were performed using Chi-square and regression analysis.

In this study, 36.9% of 700 young adults had high screen time. The mean age of participants was 20.3 ± 1.3 years; 55.6% were male; 34.7% were working; 18.3% were overweight; and 32.7% reported disturbed sleep. Furthermore, 16.7% had never participated in any outdoor activity, and the majority (58.1%) used spectacles. Participants who reported both parents working, sleep disturbances, regular junk food consumption, and a lack of outdoor activities were more likely to engage in high screen use (P < 0.05).

Screen time was high among young adults, and regular junk food consumption, lack of outdoor activity, and parental employment status were independently associated with higher screen use. These findings contribute to the limited evidence on screen-time correlates among young adults in rural India and highlight the clustering of screen use with other lifestyle-related behaviors.