Much time spent at an early age destroys children for a lifetime.

A recent Canadian study has proven that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was right about the bad effects of excessive television viewing

It turned out that minors who watch TV over a prolonged period starting at the age of two will have far more likelihood of having bad grades in school and unhealthy eating when they become adolescents.Université de Montreal (UM) researchers looked at the amount of television viewing, the food and academic habits of nearly 2,000 boys and girls from Quebec. Born between 1997 and 1998, these children began to monitor and explore when they were five months old.

When their children reached the age of two, parents made reports on the habits of watching television their sons and daughters. Eleven years later, adolescents themselves were interviewed about their eating habits, their academic education, and their current watchfulness of television.

"It is not known how much an exaggerated exposure to an early-childhood TV screen is associated with a lifestyle choice in adolescence," said Professor Linda Pagani, the corresponding author of the study.

"This group of births is ideal because children were born before the age of smartphones and tablets, and before pediatricians issued guidelines for children to watch TV."

Researcher Isabelle Simonato teaches that too much watching TV encourages children to be seated. She believes that children who have developed a propensity to spend spare time effortlessly did not become interested in school and other free activities.

More TV watching leads to poor nutrition and unhealthy habits

According to the study, for every hour after the first hour in which the child was permitted to watch television, there is an 8 percent higher consumption of unhealthy foods at the age of 13 years.

Adolescents who watch too much TV from their teeth are more eating fried fries, processed meat and cold nuts, white bread, snacks and desserts, and drink soft drinks and other unhealthy drinks. By contrast, 10 percent do not eat breakfast at all.

Furthermore, every additional watch of television (after the first watch) in children increases the body mass index (BMI) of adolescents by 10 percent. Adolescents who watch a lot of TVs also make less effort in the first year of high school, which prevents their motivation to succeed in later years.

"This study tells us that excessive lifestyle starts in early childhood and seems to persist throughout the life cycle. Life without effort creates health risks. For our society, this means a higher burden of health care associated with obesity and a lack of cardiovascular fitness, "said Professor Pagani.

New guidelines were issued that encouraged parents to limit daily television viewing to their children for one hour. The researchers compared their data with the data of children who watched less than one hour of television each day.

Again, they found that children who exceeded the guidelines for watching TV were much more prone to unhealthy eating habits, skipped breakfast for a working day, suffered from higher BMI mass indexes, watched even more TVs and were poor students.

• 19 Mar, 2018
• 1381 views