A new study revealed only one in 20 children in the United States followed the guidelines on exercise, sleep, and screen time, while approximately nearly a third are outside recommendations for all three. Researchers found children aged eight to 11 spent 3.6 hours per day on the computer screen, tablet, mobile phone, and TV, which double the recommended limit of two hours.
In the study, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, too much screen time and less sleep and exercise were being linked to a drop-off in cognitive skills - including task completion, language ability, and memory.
"We found that more than two hours of recreational screen time in children was associated with poorer cognitive development," said Jeremy Walsh, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute.
Walsh along with his research team observed the data of 4,520 children spread across 20 locations in the US. The researchers studied six kinds of cognitive skills, adjusting the results for household income, puberty development and other factors that may likely affect performance.
The results have been measured against the Canadian 24-hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth. The recommendations for sleep and exercise aligned with those of the World Health Organization (WHO). It should also be noted that Canada is the first country that proposed limits for time spent in front of a backlit screen.
Roughly 30 percent of children failed to meet any of these recommendations. Only five percent comply with all three, a quarter met two, and more than 40 percent met only one. Moreover, only 18 percent met the physical activity recommendation, 37 percent remained within the screen time limits, and half were getting enough sleep.
"The more individual recommendations the child met, the better their cognition," the study concluded and noted that the most important factor was screen time.
The strong link between brain function and time spent staring at a screen "potentially reflect the interruption of the stress recovery cycle needed for growth in children," as per Eduardo Esteban Bustamante, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois' College of Applied Health Sciences who did not take part in the study.
Meanwhile, according to the South China Morning Post, educators and scientist have been concerned regarding the constant use of tablets and mobile phones from an early age as this could lead to problems ranging from attention deficit disorder to addiction. In a recent survey, the majority of teachers said smartphones are becoming a distraction in the classroom, disrupting the ability of students to focus.
