Article summary with The relationships between screen use and health indicators among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers: A meta-analysis and systematic review by Li a.o. - 2020

What are the effects of excessive screen media use on young children´s health?

Scientific research has identified positive as well as negative effects on young children´s health. Negative effects include obesity, short sleep duration, language delay, and children´s injury. Positive effects include increasing letter knowledge, training learning abilities, and reducing the attention problem. Many factors have been identified that are related to screen use among children, such as parental media use, family income, parental age, and parental education background.

What results were found in the meta-analyses by Li et al. (2020)?

More screen media use was found to be related to higher adiposity (obesity), more sleep problems and aggressive behaviors, more risk of musculoskeletal pain and bullying, poorer health dietary behavior, worse executive function and motor development, less physical activities, and worse behavioral and emotional outcomes.

What is the 24h theory?

According to this theory, the more screen media time a child has in a day, the less time they have left for physical activity. Screen media use, along with snacks and fast food, increases the risk of overweight in children. Additionally, most advertisements on television are about sugar, sweet drinks, and other energy-dense and nutrient-poor food, leading to unhealthy dietary behavior for children.

What is the relationship of social economic status, screen media use, and obesity in children?

Research indicates that family factors such as social economic status are related to children´s obesity. More television time possibly mediates the relationship between children´s obesity and social economic status. Social economic status of a family can be seen as the foundation of consumption of unhealthy food that children watch on television. Children with low social economic status appear more likely to buy unhealthy food when they have more screen time with sugar advertisements.

How does screen media use cause sleeping problems?

Several mechanisms have been put forward that may explain how screen media use causes sleeping problems in children:

• Blue light from screen media devices suppress melatonin levels of children, changing their circadian rhythm.
• Screen media use takes up potential sleep time.
• Screen media use increases physical and psychological arousal.
• Media exposure improves levels of night alertness and reduces duration of rapid eye movement sleep.