Study: Limiting kids' screen time improves brain function
Study: Limiting kids' screen time improves brain function
By Brett Molina October 2, 2018
Cutting back on screen time, along with the right amount
of sleep and physical activity, is linked to improvements in cognition among
children, a study suggests.
The observational study analyzed data from a broader
study funded by the National Institutes of Health, focusing on 4,500 children
ages 8 to 11.
Researchers compared time spent on screens, sleeping and
engaging in physical activity from that study against the Canadian 24-hour
Movement Guidelines, created by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology to
advise how kids should spend their time in a given day.
The study associates kids who met the guidelines – which
include nine to 11 hours of sleep, at least one hour of physical activity and
less than two hours on screens – with improvements in cognition.
Researchers found even just limiting screen time or
getting enough sleep had the strongest links to better cognition.
"Evidence suggests that good sleep and physical
activity are associated with improved academic performance, while physical
activity is also linked to better reaction time, attention, memory and
inhibition," said Jeremy Walsh, the study's lead author who works with the
CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada, in a statement.
The study was published last week in the journal The
Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.
The study found only one in 20 children in the USA met
all three guidelines, while nearly one in three met none of them.
Walsh said that although kids who spent more than two
hours in front of screens were linked to poorer cognition, more research is
needed to study the impacts of different forms of screen time, such as
educational versus entertainment experiences.
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