Screen Use and Mental Fatigue Before Competition

Walk into almost any youth sporting event today and you will likely see the same scene repeated over and over again. Athletes sit silently with their heads down staring at tablets, phones, or handheld gaming systems just minutes before warm-ups begin. For many parents, this has become completely normal. Screens are easy distractions during travel, tournaments, and long waits between games. However, growing research suggests that excessive screen use, particularly social media scrolling, gaming, or passive content consumption immediately before competition, may negatively impact athletic performance, focus, reaction time, emotional readiness, and even team connection. Without knowing it, young athletes can be limiting their ability to perform and contribute to their team’s success.

This is not simply about criticizing technology or saying that “kids these days” spend too much time on screens. There are real neurological, psychological, and physiological reasons why screen exposure before competition may interfere with athletic readiness. Understanding these effects is becoming increasingly important for parents and coaches who want to help young athletes perform and feel their best. Don’t worry, I won’t end this article with a simple “just put the tablets away.” At the end I will give some options on what you can do to prime their system to perform optimally.

Competitive sports require athletes to regulate attention, emotions, reaction time, and decision-making under pressure. The brain needs to process information efficiently in a dynamic environment while remaining calm, adaptable, and focused. Tablets, social media, and video games create highly stimulating environments that continuously flood the brain with rapid visual changes, reward-driven dopamine responses, emotional stimulation, constant novelty, and divided attention demands. When athletes move directly from these high-stimulation digital environments into competition, the nervous system often struggles to recalibrate efficiently. Researchers refer to this as “mental fatigue,” a psychological state that can impair reaction time, attention control, visuomotor performance, and decision-making (Smith et al., 2018). (All things that are vital to optimizing performance).

For young athletes, this matters because sports performance depends heavily on sustained attention, emotional regulation, motor coordination, and the ability to make quick decisions under pressure. Even small declines in these abilities can impact performance during competition. In team sports, this means that it isn’t just hurting their performance but also the performance of the entire team.

Research is beginning to show measurable consequences associated with pre-performance screen use. A study by Fortes et al. (2022) found that just 30 minutes of smartphone social media use before training impaired visuomotor performance and increased mental fatigue in elite youth volleyball athletes. Researchers observed reductions in attentional efficiency and reaction performance following social media exposure. These findings are important because visuomotor performance directly influences abilities such as pitch recognition, defensive reactions, timing, hand-eye coordination, and tracking moving objects in sports. While you might not have a youth athlete playing volleyball, those are all skills needed for most youth sports, so this should be eye opening.

Additional research has shown that mental fatigue can impair executive functioning, reaction time, and psychomotor performance in athletes (Van Cutsem et al., 2017). These impairments may reduce an athlete’s ability to process rapidly changing situations during competition and respond effectively under pressure. In a dynamic sports environment this can severely hinder decision making ability which can hurt the team while also putting the youth athlete at risk (e.g., making the decision to move out of the way of a wild pitch).

The concern is not only physical. One of the more significant issues related to pregame screen use may be emotional and attentional readiness. Athletes who spend pregame time scrolling social media or playing highly stimulating video games may experience emotional overstimulation, distraction, comparison stress, and difficulty mentally transitioning into competition mode. Rather than becoming mentally present and emotionally prepared for performance, the athlete’s attention often remains fragmented between multiple digital stimuli. These athletes might show up looking as if they are already drained of energy and they struggle to flip the switch into game-mode.

Youth athletes benefit greatly from routines that help them settle emotionally, focus their attention, and mentally prepare for competition. Excessive screen use before games often works against these goals by keeping the brain in a highly stimulated state.

Another overlooked consequence of phones and tablets before games is the reduction in communication between teammates. Many strong team cultures are built during bus rides, warm-ups, shared routines, dugout conversations, and casual interaction before games begin. These moments help athletes build trust, confidence, and social connection. When every athlete disappears into an individual digital world, opportunities for relationship-building diminish significantly.

Research on team cohesion consistently shows that social connection contributes to confidence, resilience, motivation, communication, and collective performance (Carron et al., 2002). Pregame screen immersion may unintentionally isolate athletes from the very social environment that helps teams compete together effectively.

Sleep and recovery also play a major role in this conversation. This is a topic that I discuss with almost every athlete that I work with. Sleep and recovery is the ultimate performance enhancing drug. If you have quality, consistent, deep sleep, your body will be more likely to recover, heal, and perform when and where you need it to.

High screen use, especially the night before competition, can impair sleep quality and recovery. Blue light exposure and stimulating digital content may disrupt melatonin production, delay sleep onset, and reduce overall sleep quality. Poor sleep has consistently been associated with slower reaction time, impaired decision-making, decreased accuracy, increased emotional reactivity, and reduced athletic performance (Walsh et al., 2021). For young athletes balancing school, sports, social pressures, and busy schedules, recovery becomes critically important.

This does not mean that technology itself is inherently harmful. Certain forms of gaming and digital training may improve visual attention and processing speed in some contexts (Bediou et al., 2018). The larger concern is timing, dosage, and context. Highly stimulating screen-based activities immediately before competition may place athletes in a mentally fatigued or emotionally distracted state when they need focus, composure, emotional control, and readiness. As coaches attempt to get 10+ youth athletes ready for a game, it is an added stress to have athletes showing up pre-fatigued and unable to get into the right state of mind.

What can parents do?

Parents and coaches do not necessarily need to eliminate screens entirely. Instead, they can help athletes create healthier pre-performance routines. Establishing a screen-free window of 30 to 60 minutes before competition may allow the nervous system time to settle and refocus. Encouraging social interaction with teammates, engaging in positive conversations, discussing goals, or participating in calming warm-up routines can help athletes mentally transition into competition. Breathing exercises, visualization, mobility work, and focused warm-up routines may also help athletes regulate emotions and prepare mentally for performance. Prioritizing reduced screen exposure before bedtime may further improve recovery and next-day readiness.

As a mental performance coach, I recommend AT LEAST 1 hour prior to bed as a screen free time. Read a book, journal, do some stretching, or breathing exercises. But, keep the screen down and turned off. It’s even better if it is in another room and not a temptation during your bed time ritual or routine.

Pre-Competition Routine

If you set up a screen free time prior to competition you are probably wondering what you can do to fill that time in. Discussing game-time contingencies, pre-performance routines, and visualization exercises are all great ways to prime the mind and body for competition. Going over contingency plans for errors, difficult plays, or set backs can increase confidence because the athlete is mentally rehearsing how to respond to set-backs during the game. It is like knowing alternate routes for you to get to work should you come across traffic or construction.

Youth sports should help athletes develop confidence, resilience, communication, emotional control, and focus. Yet many athletes now spend the critical moments before competition immersed in highly stimulating digital environments designed to continuously capture attention. Emerging research suggests that excessive screen use immediately before training or competition may impair cognitive readiness, reaction time, focus, emotional regulation, and overall performance (Fortes et al., 2022; Van Cutsem et al., 2017).

For parents and coaches, this is not about fear or punishment. It is about helping young athletes create environments that allow them to compete, connect, and perform at their highest level. Sometimes the best pregame adjustment is not another app, video, or game. It may simply be learning when to unplug.

If you are interested in learning how to connect, communicate, and plan with your youth athlete, use the contact form to sign-up for a free consultation and let’s start a conversation.

~ Coach Tyler

References

Bediou, B., Adams, D. M., Mayer, R. E., Tipton, E., Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2018). Meta-analysis of action video game impact on perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills. Psychological Bulletin, 144(1), 77–110.

Carron, A. V., Colman, M. M., Wheeler, J., & Stevens, D. (2002). Cohesion and performance in sport: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 24(2), 168–188.

Fortes, L. S., et al. (2022). Effects of smartphone social networking service use on mental fatigue and visuomotor performance in youth athletes. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 129(6), 1543–1558.

Smith, M. R., Zeuwts, L., Lenoir, M., Hens, N., & De Jong, L. M. S. (2018). Mental fatigue impairs soccer-specific physical and technical performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 50(2), 267–276.

Van Cutsem, J., Marcora, S., De Pauw, K., Bailey, S., Meeusen, R., & Roelands, B. (2017). The effects of mental fatigue on physical performance: A systematic review. Sports Medicine, 47(8), 1569–1588.

Walsh, N. P., Halson, S. L., Sargent, C., Roach, G. D., Nédélec, M., Gupta, L., et al. (2021). Sleep and the athlete: Narrative review and 2021 expert consensus recommendations. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 55(7), 356–368.