Screen Time Activities and Aggressive Behaviors Among Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND: Aggressive behaviors have increasing trend in children and adolescents all over the world. This study aimed to perform a systematic review on the association between screen time activities and aggressive behaviors. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted through PubMed, Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), and Scopus, until 2017. Moreover, related unpublished studies (grey literature, thesis project and congress paper), considered for further data availability. Data extraction and quality assessment conducted by two independent experts. RESULTS: Through searching processes, 4381 publications were found, from them. 483 papers were from PubMed database and others were from ISI/WOS (1724) and Scopus (1938). Following the excluding of non-relevant and duplicated studies, 19 studies remained for further analyzing. Findings of the present study showed that children and adolescents who share most of their time for watching of television are at greater risk for violent behaviors including physical fighting, victim and bully. CONCLUSION: This review found that children and adolescents who share most of their time for watching of television are at greater risk for violent behaviors including physical fight, victim and bully.