Mental Health News
A team of researchers at Osaka University explored the negative effects of screen time on children. The study is published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
The Study
The researchers surveyed 885 children from 18 months to 4 years of age. They assessed several factors, namely, the average amount of screen time and outdoor play and neurodevelopmental outcomes.
The Findings
The results revealed that more screen time in children is associated with poor communication and life skills as well as low socialization scores.
Encouraging kids to play outdoors helps combat the negative effects of screen time. In fact, kids playing outdoors appear to keep happier and healthier over time.
The researchers elaborated: “Although both communication and daily living skills were worse in 4-year-old children who had had more screen time at aged 2, outdoor play time had very different effects on these two neurodevelopmental outcomes. Taken together, our findings indicate that optimizing screen time in young children is really important for appropriate neurodevelopment.”
To Know More You May Refer To
Sugiyama, M., Tsuchiya, K. J., Okubo, Y., Rahman, M. S., Uchiyama, S., Harada, T., Iwabuchi, T., Okumura, A., Nakayasu, C., Amma, Y., Suzuki, H., Takahashi, N., Kinsella-Kammerer, B., Nomura, Y., Itoh, H., & Nishimura, T. (2023). Outdoor Play as a Mitigating Factor in the Association Between Screen Time for Young Children and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes. JAMA Pediatrics. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.5356