Screen Time and Young Children Topic 2022

Running head: SCREEN TIME AND YOUNG CHILDREN
SCREEN TIME AND YOUNG CHILDREN
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SCREEN TIME AND YOUNG CHILDREN
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Topic: SCREEN TIME AND YOUNG CHILDREN
Introduction:
Children and their screening time are inseparable today since the majority of the young
children spend their time in front of screening for playing games on their electronic device or
watching. a range of national and global literature highlighted that the majority of young children
routinely engage in more than two hours of screen time per day . The children of 4 to 10 years
usually spent more than 2 hours in front of a screen which further induces psychological and
physical disabilities such as sleeping problem, obesity, unhealthy dietary habits (Aifs.gov.au
2019). Hence, this paper is aiming to discuss the explanation of why and how excessive exposure
is not harmful to the children and impact of the cognitive, emotions and relationship and
emotional wellbeing of the children in following paragraphs.
Discussion:
The excessive screen time of young children is considered as a public health concern
where parents are recommended to restrict the screening time for preventing harmful impact. A
significant number of researchers highlighted that excessive screen time induces cognitive
disabilities, retardation of memory, poor vision and other harmful effects (Domingues‐
Montanari, 2017). Consequently, the rate of chronic disease and premature death amongst infants
and adolescents is significantly higher compared to other countries (Houghton et al., 2015).
Straker et al. (2016) conduct a systematic review on the reason behind sedentary behaviors of
children and mechanism of sedentary behavior to impact on child health and the different types

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of sedentary behavior in children. The population of the majority of reviews was the children in
between 2 to 6 years. The result of the study suggested that the majority of the children exhibit
the sedentary lifestyle due to the excessive screen time which in turn facilitate harmful impact on
the young children of Australia. A significant number of preschool students are obese and tend to
have poor sleeping pattern due to screening time. They exhibit a lower level of muscle activity
and decreased the level of energy expenditure which impacts their metabolic health and poor
cardiometabolic outcome. Excessive screen time also reduces social interactions in adolescents
and decrease cognitive performance. Hence, it changes the outlook of young children for living a
healthy life. The limitation of the study is that the researchers conducted a secondary study for
addressing the research question and provide very limited intervention to mitigate the issues. For
evaluating how excessive exposure to screens might young children, Hale, and Guan (2015)
conducted a systematic review by incorporating 67 articles based on Australian school-going
children and adolescents.
The researcher argued that screen time is adversely associated with poor sleep outcomes
where excessive screen time primarily shortened the duration and delay in sleep in 90% of
studies. In this case, the limitation of the screen time before sleep time may have a positive effect
on sleeping pattern and cognitive development. The limitation of the study is that the researchers
did not consider the size and closeness to the factor while drawing the relationship between
sleeping pattern and screen time. Another limitation is the study is a secondary study which
further reduced the accuracy of the study. To support this argument, Brown, and Smolenaers
(2018), conducted a semi-structured interview on the parents of the children of 0 to 2 years for
gathering an understanding of the screening time amongst children. The result of the study
suggested that while many patterns restrict the screen time of the children, the prime reason