Children ages 8 to 12 are spending almost five hours a day in front a screen while teenagers are spending nearly 7.5 hours a day on screens, according to an NBC News report on new data from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that, among other things, studies children’s digital habits and rates programming for schools and families.
Those figures don’t even factor in the time kids are using screens for school or homework, where smartboards and school computers are likely a part of many classroom settings.
Children who spent the most time glued to a screen when they were very young proved most at risk of developing emotional, psychological and physical health problems by the time they became teenagers, researchers at Université de Montréal in Canada reported in the scientific journal Pediatric Research.
Those children were more likely to become depressed by age 12 or 13, to be the victims of bullying, to be aggressive, to have lower interpersonal skills, to have unhealthy diets, and to be overweight, the researchers found in the April study.
The findings suggest that very young children are missing out on key aspects of their brain development when they spend so much time staring at a screen instead of interacting with the outside world.
scientists have long understood the importance for future brain development of a child’s early years, when neural pathways expand most quickly. Too much screen time may deprive children of other, richer activities that help to hone cognitive, social, emotional and physical skills.
Watching a screen — whether it’s a TV, smartphone or tablet — encourages children to be more sedentary, and makes them less mindful about food if they eat while they watch, they added.
There are some important differences between TVs and tablets. Tablets are portable while big TVs are not, so if you’re watching “Frozen” over and over on your iPad, you don’t have to stay in your room or near the TV. In other words, children are more likely to spend more time gazing at a screen.
— source marketwatch.com | Oct 28, 2019