Gloria DeGaetano - Screen Time and Obesity

Screen Time and Obesity (cont.)

Many of today’s children have too much of the wrong foods as a factor for their out-of shape-condition—fast food packed with calories and lacking nutrition is one distressing example. But another significant factor in the current alarming rise of childhood obesity is the time youngsters spend sitting in front of a TV, video game or computer. They are not moving enough throughout their day.

The average modern child spends nearly 45 hours a week with television, movies, the Internet, cell phones and video games. By comparison, children spend 17 hours a week with their parents on average and 30 hours a week in school. (1)
Probing childhood obesity, researchers found that in 173 studies over the past three decades, 86% found a statistically significant relationship between increased media exposure and an increase in childhood obesity. 82% of the studies concluded that more hours of media predicted increased weight over time. A longitudinal study of 5,493 children reported that those who spent more than eight hours watching TV per week at age three were significantly more likely to be obese at age seven. (2) Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health, one of the participating agencies in the study points out that “this review is the first ever comprehensive evaluation of the many ways that media impacts children’s physical health. The results clearly show that there is a strong correlation between media exposure and long-term negative health effects to children.” (3)

You can download the Executive Summary of the report and read all the specifics. It is an extremely important study for parents, educators, and policy makers to know about.

Another significant study showed that a substantial percent (almost 36%) of US preschool children exceeded the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) recommendation to limit media time to 2 hours or less per day. (Please note: I believe the AAP should have a stronger recommendation for preschoolers by stating no more than 30 minutes daily of TV/DVD/computer use.) The study concluded that interventions to prevent and treat obesity in preschool children by reducing TV/video viewing are warranted. (4)

Yet, by age 12 months, the average baby is watching television about one hour per day, despite the AAP recommendation of no screen time before age 2. (5) This is not the parents’ fault because most moms and dads—indeed the vast majority of them, do not know about the AAP’s recommendation. With the popularity of Baby Einstein videos, a lot of parents think they give their infants a head start by exposing them to these DVDs, when in fact the opposite is true. For more information about babies and screen time, please see an article I wrote for the Parent Coaching Institute, When Should Children Begin Watching Television?

When the child begins a daily habit of sitting and taking in visual images from a 2-D, flat surface, the child can easily come to want increasing amounts of screen time and less time in 3-D reality playing and moving. The more time in front of a screen, the more likelihood the child will become obese and develop serious health problems as a result. In fact, the odds of having hypertension increases by 26% for each hour of TV watched per day. (6)

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