A new study suggests that letting young children watch violent TV programs may interfere with their sleep.  The study found that watching violent TV programs during the day was associated with increased sleep problems in children ages 3 to 5.

Watching TV after 7:00 PM was linked with increased sleep problems whether the shows were violent or not.

According to MSNBC:

“Doctors should advise parents to limit late-night TV time and violent programs in general for their kids, the researchers said. Such rules, they added, may be more achievable today than prohibiting TV altogether for young kids.”

A new study suggests that letting young children watch violent TV programs may interfere with their sleep.  The study found that watching violent TV programs during the day was associated with increased sleep problems in children ages 3 to 5.

Watching TV after 7:00 PM was linked with increased sleep problems whether the shows were violent or not.

According to MSNBC:

“Doctors should advise parents to limit late-night TV time and violent programs in general for their kids, the researchers said. Such rules, they added, may be more achievable today than prohibiting TV altogether for young kids.”

A new study suggests that letting young children watch violent TV programs may interfere with their sleep.  The study found that watching violent TV programs during the day was associated with increased sleep problems in children ages 3 to 5.

Watching TV after 7:00 PM was linked with increased sleep problems whether the shows were violent or not.

According to MSNBC:

“Doctors should advise parents to limit late-night TV time and violent programs in general for their kids, the researchers said. Such rules, they added, may be more achievable today than prohibiting TV altogether for young kids.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Communications and Media has made a new policy statement on the role of media on obesity.  They warn parents that TV watching doesn’t just make children more sedentary — it also influences their eating habits by exposing them to food advertisements.

Studies have shown that children who spend significant time watching TV are more likely to eat higher-calorie foods and grow up to be overweight.

According to Time Magazine:

“The average American child sees nearly 8,000 commercials on TV for food and beverages, and only 165 of these are for nutritious options like fruits and vegetables …  Limiting TV time to no more than two hours a day can help, says the AAP committee. Another important step …  is to make sure that children don’t have TV sets or Internet connections in their bedrooms.”

A number of recent studies have suggested that the more TV you watch, the more likely you are to develop a plethora of health problems and die at an earlier age.  A new analysis that looked at eight such studies determined that for every two additional hours you spend watching TV each day, your risk of developing type 2 diabetes increases by 20 percent and your risk of heart disease increases by 15 percent.

What’s more, for every three additional hours you spend in front of the TV, your risk of dying from all causes increases by 13 percent.

According to CNN:

“Extended TV watching has reached epidemic proportions, especially in the U.S.  Around the world, people spend more time engaged in this pastime than in any other activity except working and sleeping, but by one estimate the average American spends no fewer than five hours a day in front of the TV”.

The American “multitasking” lifestyle is causing serious damage to diets and waistlines. People who log the most screen time on TV’s, computers, or smart phones are also at higher risk for health problems — and new research is showing it’s not just due to a lack of exercise. They are also at risk for being overweight because they eat while doing these other activities.

The result of recent studies suggest that eating while doing something else leads to less satisfaction with eating, and eating too much later on. In fact, a recent study found that distracted eaters ate up to 100 percent more after the meal.

Health.com reports:

“Distracted eaters also reported being less satisfied and had significantly more trouble remembering what they ate.”

Check-ups of more than 1,000 children showed that the kids who were obese were more likely to have school lunch instead of a packed lunch from home, and were also more likely spend two hours a day watching TV or playing a video game.  This suggests that unhealthy habits are feeding the childhood obesity trend.

Obesity among U.S. children ages 6 to 11 has increased from just 6.5 percent in 1980 to 19.6 percent in 2008.

According to Science Daily:

“Significantly fewer obese kids exercised regularly, took physical education classes, or were a member of a sports team.  Because the eating and exercise patterns of obese children were so different than their normal weight peers, researchers concluded that lifestyle was more closely linked with childhood obesity, than genetics.”

Spending your time gazing at a TV or computer screen can hurt your heart and shorten your life — even if you exercise at other times.  A study found that people who spent at least four hours each day watching TV, playing video games, or using a computer for fun were more than twice as likely to experience a heart attack or stroke.

Heavy TV watchers and computer users were also found to be about 50 percent more likely to die of any cause over the course of the four-year study.

CNN reports:

“The real culprit may be what people tend to do during those activities: sit.  Why is sitting harmful? It’s not entirely clear, but animal studies have shown that prolonged sitting slows down the action of an enzyme (lipoprotein lipase) that breaks down fats in the blood, such as cholesterol and triglycerides.”

A study in Sweden found that TV ads for food, primarily fast food and sweets, dominate the advertisements shown during children’s viewing times.

Even though Sweden has passed legislation that limits television advertising targeting children, the research found that children between the age of 3 and 12 in Sweden encounter an average of 50 TV advertisements for food a week — almost all for fast food, alcohol, chocolate and sweets.

Eurekalert reports:

“There is a proven link between food advertising and the food choices that children make. Ten percent of schoolchildren worldwide and 22 million children under the age of five are overweight or obese. Children of this age in Sweden watch around 100 minutes of television a day, two thirds of which involves commercial channels.”

Babies who watch TV are more likely to have delayed cognitive and language development. This is especially true if they’re watching programs intended for adults and older children.

Recent research showed that babies who watched 60 minutes of TV daily had developmental scores one-third lower at 14 months.  This may be because when children are watching TV, they’re missing out on talking, playing, and interactions that are essential to learning and development.

According to U.S. News & World Report:

“TV watching not only isn’t educational, but it seems to stunt babies’ development … But what about ‘good’ TV, like Sesame Street? The researchers didn’t find any pluses or minuses when compared to non-educational programs”.

A new study suggests that time in front of the television may be partially to blame for weight gain, high blood pressure, and heart disease risk.

The study looked at close to 4,000 individuals, divided into two groups — those whose TV-watching increased over five years and those whose TV-watching remained the same. The researchers then examined the two groups for symptoms of metabolic syndrome.

FYI Living reports:

“The results showed that an increase in TV-watching does have an unhealthy effect. For both men and women, people who increased their TV viewing similarly increased their waistlines. Meanwhile, women who watched more TV also developed higher blood pressure than women who watched the same amount as before. Interestingly, these factors were not affected by exercise”.

No matter how physically active a child is, time spent in front of the computer or television screen is associated with psychological problems. In other words, children can’t make up for TV time by spending extra hours exercising.

The findings also suggest that the way children spend their sedentary time, in addition to how much time they spend being sedentary in the first place, matters for their mental health.

According to Live Science:

“… [R]esearchers asked 1,013 British 10- and 11-year-olds how much time each day they spent in front of a computer or TV. The children also wore accelerometers around their waists for a week to track their physical activity and sedentary time … The study found that … more than two hours a day in front of a TV or computer was associated with more emotional and behavioral difficulties.”