NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Reducing recreational screen use by families increased children’s physical activity by about 45 minutes per day in a cluster-randomized trial conducted in Denmark.
There was no such benefit in adults, however, nor was there an effect on sleep in kids or their parents, Dr. Anders Groentved of the University of Southern Denmark, in Odense, and colleagues report in JAMA Pediatrics.
Their study’s large effect size “suggests that the high levels of recreational screen media use seen in many children should be a public health concern,” they write.
“Balancing children’s recreational screen media use should be a public health priority as it increases their physical activity substantially,” they add.
The study included 89 families with 164 adults and 181 children (49% girls in the intervention group, 60% in the control group).
Invitations to participate in the study were e-mailed to households in southern Denmark with at least one child 6 to 10 years of age. Families were eligible to participate if the parents self-reported more than 2.4 hours per day of recreational screen use, ethinylestradiol levonorgestrel richter 0 03 mg 0 15 mg bijwerkingen which was the 40th percentile in the source population.
In the intervention group, all participants had to hand over their portable devices (including phones and tablets) for the duration of the two-week study. If one of the adults could not do so for job-related reasons, at least one adult in the household had to relinquish their smartphone.
Compliance was tracked using noncommercial apps and a proprietary television monitor. Participants were considered compliant if they had seven hours or less per week of screen media use during the study period.
Children in this study had a baseline weekly mean of 35.9 hours of screen media use, which, according to the researchers, is somewhat lower than a figure reported earlier this year for U.S. children ages 12 to 13.
To track activity levels, all participants wore triaxial accelerometers, one at the waist/hip and the other one at mid-thigh. Sleep was measured via single-channel electroencephalography at home.
Leisure non-sedentary activity rose by 44.8 minutes per day in the intervention group and by 1.0 minute in the control group (intention-to-treat between-group mean difference, 45.8 minutes per day; P<0.001).
The researchers theorized that the reason there was no effect from the intervention in adults was that they predominantly replaced time usually spent on screen media with other types of sedentary activities.
Dr. James J. Ashton of Southampton Children’s Hospital, in England, told Reuters Health by email that “the highly significant increase in physical activity in those in the intervention group . . . points to a link between screen use and low physical activity, which in turn is linked to adverse health outcomes.”
Dr. Ashton was the lead author of a 2019 report on screen time in adolescents and children, but was not involved in the new research.
“Maximising long-term health outcomes in children requires a holistic approach,” he said, adding that “whilst limiting screen time may be a useful tool to increase physical activity, additional considerations including nutrition, education and child poverty are also key targets to address.”
“Increasingly, screen use is a mandated part of many jobs,” he said, so “maximising a long-term, healthy relationship with screen use must be considered in all interventions and public-health strategies.”
Dr. Groentved did not reply to a request for additional comments.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/3aeGduq JAMA Pediatrics, online May 23, 2022.
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