Pre-schoolers who watch less than one hour of TV per day get 22 more minutes of sleep at night — or nearly 2.5 hours per week — than those who watch more than an hour of TV daily, new research has found.
The study, published in Sleep Health, Journal of theNational Sleep Foundation, suggests that TV use by young children affects thequality and duration of sleep, measured by an actigraphic device kids wore likea watch on their wrist.
Moreover, while daytime napping was found to increase amongthe kids who watched the most TV, it did not fully compensate for the lostsleep at night.
“The good news is, this is addressable. Parents assumedthat TV was helping their kids wind down. But it didn’t work. Those kidsweren’t getting good sleep, and it wasn’t helping them fall asleep better. It’sgood to have this data,” said Rebecca Spencer, Associate Professor at theUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst in the US.
A very diverse group of 470 pre-schoolers participated inthe study, wearing actigraphs for up to 16 days. Their parents and caregiversanswered questionnaires about demographics and the children’s health andbehaviour, including detailed questions on TV use.
The findings showed that pre-schoolers who watch TV sleepsignificantly less than those who do not.
On an average, young children without TVs in their bedroomsslept 30 minutes more at night than those with a TV in their bedroom, the studysaid.The findings of the researchers come on theheels of new guidelines from the World Health Organisation (WHO), which saychildren between age 2 and 4 years should have no more than one hour of”sedentary screen time” daily – and less or no screen time is evenbetter.