Screen Time
I attended a workshop last week-end on fighting childhood obesity. When the speakers started throwing out stats, I found I was familiar with most of the health statistics on children. There was one statistic that was new to me. Inactivity is always discussed as one of the causes for childhood obesity. Screen time (TV, computers, video games etc) always takes part of the blame. I thought the average American child spent 5 hours a day on screen time, at this workshop they claimed that is now more than 6 hours a day children spend on screen time. Screen time can have a double negative affect. Not only are the children inactive, many times they are being influenced to make bad food choices.
students and one of the questions was about TV time (not general screen time).
I was SHOCKED at how much TV time most of our students spend - it averaged
over 5 hours, but MANY students indicated over 6 hours. One of the other
questions was also "do you have rules about TV watching at home?" The
majority said "no", but for the ones that did have rules, their TV time was less.
This is a reflection of parenting. I work in a low income, high minority district
where safety is a concern. I know young students are told to stay in the house
when their parents are not home. What are they going to do? Well, they
watch TV!