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Too Much Screen Time For Kids And Teens

By Peter Liu

[Health & Your Life]

How do we reduce screen time for kids and teens? Peter Liu explores the options.

For most adults, being health conscious can be a full time job. For children and teenagers, health consciousness usually just doesn’t factor into the agenda. Most kids are too busy playing to focus on things like how many servings of fruit to have each day, much less monitoring how much time they should spend exercising. As children grow into teenagers, staying health conscious becomes even less important in the face of school, friends, dates and self-image. Food only really factors into the equation for kids and teens when they get hungry and there are plenty of temptations designed to make them veer off the healthy path. Recent studies have shown that in addition to eating too much unhealthy junk food, kids and teens are habitually spending too much time sitting still, staring at a screen. Whether this relates to television, video games or games and social networking on the computer, the younger generation is increasingly focused on tasks that are accomplished while being sedentary. Without proper amounts of exercise, healthy food intake and a better educational foundation on nutrition issues, kids will continue to develop these concerning screen time habits.

Screen Time Study

A recent survey and subsequent study conducted by the Canadian Institute for Health Information has claimed that one of the foremost reasons kids and teens are becoming increasingly overweight is the amount of time they spend daily sitting idle in front of a screen. Titled “Comparing Activity and Fruit and Vegetable Consumption by Weight Status Among Children and Youth,” it was intended to do exactly what the title suggests. The study used data from the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey, which suggested that over a quarter of Canadian kids aged 2 to 17 were either overweight or obese.

For this study, researchers measured the height and weight of children from 6 to 11 years of age and teens from 12 to 17 years of age to determine which factors separated overweight kids and their healthy weight counterparts. Daily fruit and vegetable consumption, daily physical activity and daily screen time was examined for each age group and respective gender, with slight differences found for each. It was found that 48 per cent of the overweight 6 to 11 age group spent two or more hours sitting in front of a screen, while only 31 per cent of their healthy weight peers had two or more hours of screen time daily. Meanwhile, 75 per cent of the overweight 12 to 17 age group claimed two or more hours of screen time, versus 67 per cent of their healthy weight peers. Physical activity results were similar across the board for both genders and age groups, with most overweight and healthy weight kids and teens participating in physical activity for at least an hour a day.

Kids Plugged In

The main issue surrounding this study is the growing realization that kids in the 12 to 17 age range are part of a firm culture involving technology and media devices like computers and cell phones. Much of their social lives depend on the computer, and as a result, much of their entertainment is derived from a screen. While teens may still rely on television for visual and video gaming entertainment, what they glean from the television is then discussed with their peers online. This pattern does not apply as much to the 6 to 11 age group, since physical activity is still a major part of the social lives of younger children and they don’t feel the need to socialize with peers over the internet. The goal in reaching younger generations is to improve upon their foundation of nutritional education, so they build healthy eating habits.

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