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Limiting the use of recreational screening in children has been associated with improved cognition.
One study found that children aged eight to eleven who used screens for less than two hours a day performed better in mental fitness tests.
By combining this with nine to 11 hours of sleep, the night has proven to be the best for performance.
The researchers said more work is now needed to better understand the effects of different types of screen usage.
However, they recognize that their observational study shows only an association between time spent in front of a screen and cognition and can not prove a causal link.
And he did not watch how kids used their screen time, whether it was watching TV, playing video games, or using social media.
The study of 4,500 American children, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, used questionnaires to estimate:
- physical activity
- to sleep
- recreational screen time
The children also passed an assessment test of cognitive skills, including:
- language
- Memory
- Warning
The controlled study for:
- household income
- parenting and child education
- Ethnicity
- pubertal development
- body mass index (BMI)
- traumatic brain injury
He found that children who each day had less than two hours of time spent in front of a recreational screen slept from nine to eleven o'clock and did at least one hour of physical activity, which was better than the one who did not. did none.
Less than two hours of screen time per day were the factors most related to better test performance.
Dr. Jeremy Walsh of the CHEO Ottawa Research Institute said, "Based on our findings, pediatricians, parents, educators and policy makers should limit the time spent in front of the screens.
Dr. Walsh added that further research was now needed on the links between screen time and cognition, including studying the effects of different types of screen time.
For example, it has been proven that video games and educational television programs can have cognitive benefits.
However, new data suggests that the use of mobile devices and social media could affect attention, memory and impulse control, he added.
The researchers said that it was important to examine in more detail the effects of different types of screen time.
However, the authors acknowledged that their study had limitations, including that the data was self-reported.
The questionnaires are also used only at the beginning of the study and therefore do not allow to follow the evolution of behaviors over time.
Dr. Kirsten Corder, a senior researcher at Cambridge University, who did not participate in the study, said that she was adding to existing evidence showing potential negative links to screen time and cognitive development at home. the children.
But she pointed out that children may have had difficulty answering questions accurately.
Dr Corder also said that more work is needed to develop more accurate ways of assessing the effects of screen time in detail.
"We hope these results will stimulate further research using techniques that allow researchers to explore how multiple behaviors can interact to improve cognition and health," she said.
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