I started using my iPad a lot more during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Could I be getting too much screen time?
That’s a really good question,
and not one that many kids are asking themselves.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, so much of our world shifted online.
Now we have to figure out how to prevent excessive screen time.
As a researcher focused on healthy active living in kids,
we wanted to determine the proportion of kids six months into the pandemic
that were achieving the recommended guidelines for physical activity,
sedentary behavior, which includes screen time and sleep,
collectively known as the 24-hour movement guidelines.
To achieve this, we conducted a study using online data
from a survey of more than 1000 parents from across Canada.
We looked to identify reasons why some children
were not meeting the 24 hour guidelines during the pandemic.
we discovered that 96% of Canadian school-aged children
and youth did not meet the 24-hour movement guidelines,
and 73% did not meet the Screentime recommendations.
Interestingly, although pandemic related restrictions were similar
for most children, such as limiting social gatherings
and reduced in-person activities, the relationships
with 24-hour movement behaviours varied among children and youth.
What our study found was that a parent's perceived inability
to restrict their children's screen time and children not spending enough
time outdoors were related to not meeting the 24 hour movement guidelines
and the physical activity and screen time recommendations.
As kids head back to school, it's important that parents feel empowered
to work with their kids to limit recreational screen
time and encourage kids to get outside and play.