while increasing physical activity to combat the global obesity crisis is clearly vital, the WHO guidelines on screen time may not achieve this.
Business
Standard : Get children more active. That’s the aim of the
World Health Organisation’s new guidelines on physical activity,
sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under five years of age.
The guidelines make specific recommendations about the amount of
sleep, physical activity and screen time children should have each
day. For screen time, the guidelines state that children under two
years old should get no screen time and children aged two to five
should get no more than an hour a day.
While
childhood
obesity is a global crisis, cuts lives short and has significant
economic costs the WHO guidelines on screen time are oversimplified.
The
main evidence the WHO
guidelines draw on is a 2017 review of evidence looking at the
relationship between sedentary behaviour and health in children under
the age of five. Of the 96 papers identified in this review, 54
focused on the association between obesity and screen use. Of these,
the authors of the report rate all but one as “very low-quality
evidence”, using the GRADE framework – a widely used tool for
rating medical evidence.
There
are two main reasons for the evidence being rated as low quality.
First, almost all the studies are observational, meaning they can’t
show cause and effect, only associations between screen time and
obesity. Second, the findings are not consistent. Of the 54 studies,
25 found no association between screen time and obesity, 13 found
that higher amounts of screen time were related to higher levels
obesity and 16 found a mixture of results, depending on the type of
screen time and obesity measure used.
There
are better guidelines
Other
guidelines on children’s screen time published by health
professionals, such as the UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child
Health (RCPCH) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), do a
better job of reflecting the complexities of the evidence and refrain
from making recommendations based on time alone.
The
first UK guideline on screen time was published in 2019 by the RCPCH.
They aim to help parents make healthy choices for their families,
suggesting that parents should consider four key questions: is screen
time controlled? Does screen use interfere with what your family
wants to do? Does screen use interfere with sleep? And, are you able
to control snacking during screen time? This approach of encouraging
parents to reflect on the screen time use of their children
acknowledges that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t support
parents.
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