Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the extent to which preschool children meet guidelines for screen time (<1 h/day) and sleep (10–13 h/24-h) and explored home factors that affect these behaviors. Parents of preschoolers across income settings in South Africa (urban high-income n = 27, urban low-income n = 96 and rural low-income n = 142) completed a questionnaire. Urban high-income children had higher rates of exceeding screen time guidelines (67.0%) than children from urban low-income (26.0%) and rural low-income (3.5%) settings. Most children (81.0%) met sleep guidelines on weekdays and on weekends (75.0%). More urban high-income children met the sleep guideline, in comparison to both low-income settings. Fewer urban high-income parents (50.0%) thought that screen time would not affect their preschooler’s health, compared to urban low-income (90.4%) and rural low-income (81.7%) parents. Weeknight bedtime was positively correlated with both weekday screen time (p = 0.001) and weekday TV time (p = 0.005), indicating that more time on screens correlated with later bedtimes. Meeting screen time and sleep guidelines differs across income settings, but it is evident that parents of preschoolers across all income settings would benefit from greater awareness about guidelines.
Highlights
There has been a recent shift towards integrated 24-h movement guidelines for physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior, and sleep in preschool children
urban high-income (UH) children were significantly older than children from low-income settings, and parents from the UH setting were significantly older than
The UH and rural low-income (RL) parents were of a similar age, even though 30% of the RL sample were grandmothers, where none of the respondents in the UH sample were grandparents
Summary
There has been a recent shift towards integrated 24-h movement guidelines for physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior, and sleep in preschool children. Released South African 24-h movement guidelines for birth to five years [1] recommend: (i) at least 180 min of PA, which should include at least 60 min of energetic play; (ii) less than 1 h of sedentary screen time; and (iii) 10 to 13 h of sleep. These movement behavior guidelines align with those released by the WHO [2], screen time. Public Health 2020, 17, 5449; doi:10.3390/ijerph17155449 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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