The research drew on data from the Study of Estonian Children’s Mental Health, a project commissioned by the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs to map the psychological wellbeing of the country’s youth. The analytical sample comprised 681 school children, spanning late childhood and adolescence. Each participant reported their daily screen time and completed the Psychological Wellbeing subscale of the Kidscreen-52, a widely used instrument for assessing self-perceived wellbeing in young people. Adolescents aged eleven and older also filled out the youth version of the Pediatric Symptoms Checklist, a brief screening tool for emotional and behavioral difficulties, and the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale, which captures symptoms of anxiety and depression. Parents completed their own version of the Pediatric Symptoms Checklist and a questionnaire about how often the family engaged in joint activities and conversations.

The methodological heart of the study is Latent Class Analysis, a statistical technique that identifies hidden subgroups within a population based on patterns of responses. Rather than treating screen time as a simple continuum and correlating it with mental health scores, the researchers allowed distinct time-use profiles to emerge from the data itself. The model combined children’s self-reported screen time and attendance at training activities with parents’ reports of how frequently the family shared activities and conversations. Age and self-perceived problematic screen use were included as covariates that could predict which class a child belonged to, allowing the researchers to separate the effect of chronological development from the effect of a child’s own sense that their screen habits had gotten out of control.

Three distinct patterns emerged. The largest group, accounting for 48.5 percent of the sample, was labeled Balanced: these children combined moderate screen use with regular participation in training and frequent family time. A second group, 31.4 percent, was labeled Off-Screen Active, characterized by heavy involvement in sports, clubs, and family life. The third and smallest group, 20.1 percent, was labeled Screen-Dominant. These children reported intensive screen use, spent less time in joint family activities and conversations, and attended training less frequently than their peers. In other words, one in five children in the sample lived a daily routine in which screens had effectively crowded out the activities that developmental psychologists traditionally consider protective.

When the researchers compared the three groups on mental health outcomes, the Screen-Dominant class stood out for all the wrong reasons. Its members showed poorer psychological wellbeing on the Kidscreen-52 measure and worse scores across the mental health indicators than children in either of the other two classes. The differences held even after accounting for age and self-perceived problematic screen use, suggesting that the pattern of time use itself, not merely how old a child is or how worried they feel about their own habits, is tied to mental health outcomes. For the Screen-Dominant group, the combination of heavy screen use and displaced family and training time appeared to carry a compound risk.

One of the study’s most striking findings concerns attention. Self-reported attentional problems were lowest not in the Off-Screen Active group, as one might expect, but in the Balanced class. Children whose routines mixed screen time with other activities reported fewer attention difficulties than either the heavy screen users or the highly active off-screen group. This nonlinear pattern hints that the relationship between time use and cognition may not be a simple dose-response curve, and that a moderate, varied routine may support attention better than either extreme.

Equally unexpected was the performance of the Off-Screen Active class. Despite their heavy involvement in training, family activities, and conversations, these children did not differ from the Balanced class on any mental health indicator. Being exceptionally active off-screen, in other words, conferred no additional psychological benefit beyond that enjoyed by children with a balanced routine. The authors interpret this as evidence that what matters most is avoiding the displacement of beneficial activities by screens, rather than maximizing off-screen engagement. The findings thus provide empirical support for the displacement hypothesis, the long-standing theoretical claim that excessive screen use harms development primarily when it replaces developmentally valuable experiences such as face-to-face family interaction, physical activity, and structured skill-building.

The study’s design has notable strengths. By using Latent Class Analysis, the researchers avoided the statistical pitfalls of treating screen time as an isolated variable, instead capturing the way screens, sports, and family life interlock in real daily routines. The inclusion of both child self-reports and parent reports reduces the risk that a single informant’s bias drives the results, and the use of validated instruments such as the PSC-17 and RCADS-25 grounds the mental health comparisons in established clinical screening measures. The work was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Estonian National Institute for Health Development, with informed parental consent and child agreement obtained before participation.

Nevertheless, the study’s cross-sectional nature means the arrow of causation remains unresolved. Children with emerging anxiety or depression may retreat into screens and withdraw from family and training, rather than the reverse. Longitudinal follow-up would be needed to determine whether Screen-Dominant routines precede mental health difficulties or develop in response to them. The sample, while substantial, comes from a single national context, and cultural norms around family time and organized activities may shape how these patterns generalize elsewhere. Self-reported screen time is also known to be imperfect, particularly among younger children.

Even with those caveats, the practical implications are clear. The authors argue that preventive efforts to support youth mental health should address both screen use and off-screen activities together, rather than focusing on screen minutes in isolation. Displacement, they conclude, emerges primarily among subgroups whose daily routines are characterized by intensive screen use, which means the children most at risk are those whose screens have crowded out family meals, conversations, clubs, and sports. For parents, educators, and policymakers, the message is less about banning devices and more about protecting the developmental spaces that screens so easily consume. In a world where one in five children in this sample already lives a screen-dominant life, that distinction may shape the next generation of digital wellbeing guidance.

Subject of Research: Associations between screen use patterns, off-screen activities, and mental health in children and adolescents

Article Title: Patterns of screen use and off-screen activities among children and adolescents and their associations with mental health

Article References: Tulviste, T., Tulviste, J., Tuvi, I., Sultson, H., Murd, C., Havik, M., Eensoo, D., Laidra, K., Siilbek, E., & Konstabel, K. (2026). Patterns of screen use and off-screen activities among children and adolescents and their associations with mental health. BMC Pediatrics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-026-07739-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12887-026-07739-w

Keywords: screen time, children, adolescents, mental health, displacement hypothesis, latent class analysis, wellbeing, anxiety, depression, family activities, BMC Pediatrics, Estonia

The urgency of the work is grounded in sobering data. A 2022 survey by the Tallinn Municipal Police Department found that apartment associations in the Estonian capital are largely unprepared for crises. Of 694 respondents, 80 percent had not mapped alternative solutions or backup systems for utility failures, more than 90 percent had not considered alternative heating options, and 76 percent had no plan for water or sewage outages. Yet 90.5 percent of buildings ensure systematic access to technical infrastructure rooms, and 80 percent maintain resident contact information for emergencies. With approximately 6,575 apartment associations registered in Tallinn and 96 percent of Estonian apartments privatized and managed through such associations, these organizations represent an enormous, largely untapped resource for community resilience.

The research team employed an exploratory, design-oriented case study informed by principles of Action Design Research, combining a World-Café-style participatory workshop with older residents, expert consultations with crisis managers, and analysis of secondary data. The workshop, held in January 2023 at the Kristiine Activity Center, gathered 30 anonymous written responses from older adults, 90 percent of whom were over 70 years old and 60 percent of whom lived alone. The findings revealed striking gaps in crisis awareness: 63 percent did not know the locations of public shelters, 43 percent did not know which phone number to call in danger, and only 41 percent reported access to a shelter. Ten percent of participants did not even live at the address listed in the national Population Register, underscoring the data-quality problems that plague emergency planning.

Communication preferences proved equally revealing. When asked how they would want to receive crisis information, 70 percent chose radio, 67 percent television, 67 percent SMS, and 60 percent phone calls, while only 40 percent selected official websites. More than half did not use the internet daily, and 41 percent had no email account. Trust patterns were equally instructive: Tallinn City was the most trusted information source at 66 percent, followed by state institutions at 41 percent, while social media ranked last at 21 percent. These results point decisively toward a hybrid, multi-channel communication strategy rather than a purely digital portal, with apartment associations acting as trusted local intermediaries between municipal authorities and residents.

Expert consultations with the Tallinn Municipal Police Department reinforced the institutional side of the problem. Crisis managers emphasized that during emergencies the state delegates numerous tasks to municipalities, yet they lack reliable, up-to-date databases on apartment associations, their contact persons, building resources, and preparedness levels. Existing registers, including the e-Business Register, often contain outdated information. Experts also highlighted the difficulty of identifying residents who need extra help during evacuations, since population registers lack accurate residence data and details on vulnerable groups, a problem compounded by frequent apartment rentals and limited contact between landlords and housing associations.

The centerpiece of the study is the Coordination Framework for Municipal-Apartment Association Crisis Preparedness, or C-MAACP Framework, a conceptual e-service that integrates six core elements: municipal coordination, apartment-association participation, register-supported information management, privacy-aware access, preparedness-status visualization, and multi-channel communication. Built on Estonia’s X-Road data exchange layer, the platform would aggregate data from national registers including the Social Services and Benefits Data Register, the e-Population Register, the e-Business Register, and the e-Land Register. Apartment associations would upload building-specific information, crisis plans, resource descriptions, and resident contact lists, while municipalities would assign each building a color-coded preparedness rating: green for self-sufficient, yellow for needing development, and red for high-risk buildings requiring external support.

Privacy emerges as a central design constraint rather than an afterthought. The framework employs a two-tier, role-based access model aligned with GDPR principles of purpose limitation and data minimization. Apartment associations would see only task-relevant, aggregated preparedness information, while identifiable or vulnerability-related data would remain restricted to authorized municipal or rescue-service roles with a clear legal basis. The researchers note that even aggregated indicators can become re-identifiable in small apartment buildings, requiring threshold rules, suppression of small-cell outputs, and audit trails. A full legal analysis and Data Protection Impact Assessment would be mandatory before any deployment.

A formative evaluation with experts from the Estonian Rescue Services Agency and the Tallinn Municipal Police Department confirmed that no comparable e-service exists today and that the concept addresses a genuine operational need. Experts suggested the tool could save significant work time for the Rescue Board, whose shelter assessments currently rely on home visits, and recommended involving the Estonian Union of Co-operative Housing Associations in future prototype testing. However, they also flagged unresolved challenges: data protection questions, development costs, the difficulty of motivating voluntary apartment associations to participate, and the technical complexity of interfacing with multiple state databases. Critically, they asked how the system would function during long-term power or internet outages, a scenario the framework must address through resilient fallback procedures.

The study’s broader significance extends beyond Estonia. The researchers argue that municipal crisis preparedness is fundamentally a socio-technical coordination problem, not merely a database integration exercise. Their design principles, connecting public-sector data infrastructures, local community intermediaries, trusted multi-channel communication, and privacy-aware governance, are transferable to any municipality that must coordinate digital systems with grassroots organizations and vulnerable residents. In less digitally mature contexts, the same logic could apply with more manual data updating and stronger reliance on community networks. The authors are careful to position the framework as a concept rather than a tested system: prototype development, legal analysis, and empirical evaluation with apartment associations, municipal users, and rescue services remain essential next steps before any claims about operational effectiveness can be made.

As Europe’s population ages, with the number of people aged 60 or above projected to reach 1.4 billion globally by 2030, the challenge of reaching older residents during emergencies will only intensify. Estonia, with 99 percent of public services available online around the clock, offers an unusually favorable testing ground for solutions that bridge high-tech infrastructure and low-tech human realities. The C-MAACP Framework suggests that the future of crisis communication may depend less on building new apps and more on weaving together the registers, institutions, and neighborhood associations that already exist, ensuring that when the next crisis comes, no building and no resident is left invisible.

Subject of Research: Designing e-services to improve crisis communication and preparedness cooperation between local municipalities and apartment associations

Article Title: Designing E-Services for Improving Crisis Communication in Local Municipalities: Cooperation with Apartment Associations

Article References: Riibe, J., Hassan, J. M., Sharma, R., Lips, S., & Draheim, D. (2026). Designing E-Services for Improving Crisis Communication in Local Municipalities: Cooperation with Apartment Associations. Information Systems Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-026-10811-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-026-10811-6

Keywords: crisis management, e-services, apartment associations, municipal crisis preparedness, digital crisis communication, emergency evacuation, e-governance, X-Road, privacy-by-design, older adults, Estonia, action design research