Background Digital devices have become pervasive in children and adolescents’ lives, with a high prevalence of excessive screen time. This study aimed to investigate the associations between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and excessive recreational screen time.

Methods Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), we examined the associations of prospectively collected individual ACEs, ACE scores, and poverty with excessive recreational screen time (≥ 2 hours) across different media types. We ran further analyses to investigate sex differences in the associations of ACEs with excessive screen time. The robustness of these associations were tested by controlling for sex, ethnicity, baseline household income, parental education levels, parental social class, and housing tenure.

Results Among the included 11,439 adolescents (49.9% boys), those who experienced 4 or more ACEs were more likely to partake in excessive screen time compared to those with no ACEs after adjusting for covariates. This included television time at age 14 (OR: 1.31; 95% CI: 1.09, 1.57), electronic game time at age 14 (OR: 1.38; 95% CI: 1.13, 1.69) and electronic game time at age 17 (OR: 1.40; 95% CI: 1.07, 1.82). We found similar associations between individual ACEs and excessive screen time. For example, parental mental health were associated with excessive television time at age 14 (OR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.07, 1.28) and excessive electronic game time at 14 years (OR: 1.29; 95% CI: 1.16, 1.43) and 17 years (OR: 1.21; 95% CI: 1.07, 1.38). Additionally, when stratifying by sex we found that girls showed stronger associations between certain ACEs and excessive screen time compared to boys.

Discussion ACEs and poverty are associated with adolescents’ later excessive recreational screen time, including excessive time spent on television watching, electronic games, and social networking. Further studies are needed to better understand the contributions of excessive screen time to the links between ACEs, poverty, and physical and mental health.