Abstract
BackgroundPaediatric recommendations to limit children’s and adolescents’ screen based media use (SBMU) to less than two hours per day appear to have gone unheeded. Given the associated adverse physical and mental health outcomes of SBMU it is understandable that concern is growing worldwide. However, because the majority of studies measuring SBMU have focused on TV viewing, computer use, video game playing, or a combination of these the true extent of total SBMU (including non-sedentary hand held devices) and time spent on specific screen activities remains relatively unknown. This study assesses the amount of time Australian children and adolescents spend on all types of screens and specific screen activities.MethodsWe administered an online instrument specifically developed to gather data on all types of SBMU and SBMU activities to 2,620 (1373 males and 1247 females) 8 to 16 year olds from 25 Australian government and non-government primary and secondary schools.ResultsWe found that 45% of 8 year olds to 80% of 16 year olds exceeded the recommended < 2 hours per day for SBMU. A series of hierarchical linear models demonstrated different relationships between the degree to which total SBMU and SBMU on specific activities (TV viewing, Gaming, Social Networking, and Web Use) exceeded the < 2 hours recommendation in relation to sex and age.ConclusionsCurrent paediatric recommendations pertaining to SBMU may no longer be tenable because screen based media are central in the everyday lives of children and adolescents. In any reappraisal of SBMU exposure times, researchers, educators and health professionals need to take cognizance of the extent to which SBMU differs across specific screen activity, sex, and age.
Highlights
Paediatric recommendations to limit children’s and adolescents’ screen based media use (SBMU) to less than two hours per day appear to have gone unheeded
Descriptive data The data collected included information relating to the specific ways in which young people reported engaging in SBMU
While the main analyses below related to the presence or absence of problematic SBMU, we present the means and standard deviations for the different forms of SBMU
Summary
Paediatric recommendations to limit children’s and adolescents’ screen based media use (SBMU) to less than two hours per day appear to have gone unheeded. Canadian Paediatric Society [7] Such is the continued growing concern pertaining to SBMU that the US Department of Health and Human Services [8] cites its reduction as a key health improvement priority in its 10 year health promotion and disease prevention objective. These guidelines focus on SBMU for entertainment rather than educational purposes. The increasing use of SBMU in regular primary school and high school classrooms during the regular school day, and for homework purposes, and for social networking need to be taken into account if a more accurate estimate of SBMU and its consequences (positive and negative) are to be ascertained
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