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According to a new study, limiting children's entertainment time to less than two hours a day, combined with adequate sleep and physical activity, is associated with improved cognition.
The study, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, included approximately 4,500 American children aged 8 to 11 and measured their habits against the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth.
According to a study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, limiting children's entertainment time to less than two hours a day, combined with adequate sleep and physical activity, is associated with improved mental health. cognition.
Credit: Peter Cade / Image Bank / Getty Images
It was found that 51% of children had uninterrupted sleep per recommended night of nine to 11 hours per night, 37% met the two hour or less per hobby screen, and 18% met the recommendation of a full day. physical activity of at least 60 minutes. of accumulated physical activity per day.
Only 5% of the children in the study responded to the three recommendations; 30% did not encounter any.
On average, participants slept 9.1 hours a night, spent 3.6 hours a day on the screen and reached the goal of physical activity 3.7 days a week.
The researchers found that with each participant having met a recommendation, there was a positive association with overall cognition, which included memory, attention, processing speed and language.
According to the study, those who met all three had the most "superior" overall cognition, followed by those respecting the recommendations of sleep and time spent in front of a screen and finally the recommendation of time spent in front of a screen.
"We know that the behavior of physical activity, sleep and the time spent in front of a screen can have an independent impact on the cognitive health of the child. However, these behaviors are never combined, "said Jeremy Walsh, lead author of the study and a former postdoctoral fellow at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, where the research was conducted. "We really had the opportunity here to see how to respond to each of these guidelines and to follow all the guidelines pertaining to cognition in a large sample of American children."
The study took data from the cognitive development study of the adolescent brain funded by the National Institutes of Health and included surveys done by parents on the amount of sleep a child has. , its frequency of physical activity and the time spent in front of the screen.
Walsh thinks the 30% of participants who do not adhere to any of the guidelines are the ones who have the most to gain from an adjustment of daily behaviors.
"They will benefit the most because they do not benefit from complying with these guidelines," said Walsh.
"This new research adds to existing evidence and corroborates concerns about screen time and potentially negative links to cognitive development in children," said Kirsten Corder, a senior research scientist at the University of Toronto. MRC Epidemiology Unit of the University of Cambridge. She did not participate in the study.
She suggested that future research could benefit from data collection methods that provide more accurate results than questionnaires based on self-reported information.
Other organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, have put in place guidelines to help manage children's screen time.
The organization suggests setting rules, knowing who your child is talking to, knowing what he's doing, promoting physical recreation and creating "no-technology zones" such as bedrooms. . The amount of screen time recommended depends on the age of the child.
Walsh thinks having good screening habits could encourage use in the recommended durations and the benefits that accrue from it.
"I think the main objective here is for parents to consider the whole 24-hour day of their children," he said, "and set realistic rules or limits regarding the duration of display screens, and making sure to encourage physical activity. "
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