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Keeping your child's mind sharp may involve making sure that he does not spend all day on his smartphone or on another screen, suggests even more research published this week.
Canadian researchers have examined the first data from a 10-year American project to study brain development in children, called the cognitive development study of the adolescent brain (or, more intelligently, the ABCD study).
As part of the project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, American researchers interviewed children and their parents about their lifestyle. This included the time spent doing exercise, sleeping and watching screens on average each day. The children also took questionnaires, provided sputum samples and filled puzzles that measured their cognitive functions.
The ongoing study examined the results of 4,524 children aged 8 to 11 years who participated in the ABCD study from September 2016 to 2017.
In Canada and the United States, doctors generally recommend that children over 6 years of age not to watch more than two hours a day. But only 37% of children participating in the study met this criterion. And the researchers found that these children were more likely to pass their cognitive tests.
The results were published in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
"We need to pay attention to how long we are on the screens," said Washington Post's senior author, Jeremy Walsh, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia. "This study shows that less than two hours of screen time are useful for children."
The time spent in front of the screen was not the only reason for the children's ability to think. Only 50% of the group members said that doctors recommended 9 to 11 hours of sleep, while only 18% had the recommended amount of exercise, at least 60 minutes a day. Children who did not follow these guidelines also had lower average performance.
The study is also observation, that is to say, it can not prove a direct link between more time spent in front of the screen and a poorer thought. But compared to children who did not meet any of the three guidelines, the researchers found that children with less screen time had better results on these tests. A similar pattern has been observed in children who both slept well and less time spent in front of the screen, further reinforcing the link between lack of sleep and screens.
According to the researchers, more studies need to be done to confirm if and how much time spent in front of a screen can harm children's cognition.
In addition, the American Academy of Pediatrics has stopped focusing on a strict guideline of up to two hours per day of screen for children over six years old. about sleep and other healthy behaviors. For children aged 18 months to 6 years, however, the AAP recommends no more than one hour of screen time, while younger children should not receive one. However, some studies have suggested that the potential for harm depends more on the type of content displayed on these screens and parental involvement than the duration of use.
The ABCD study plans to enroll more than 10,000 children by the time it is completed.
[Lancet Child & Adolescent Health via Washington Post]Source link
