Screen time linked to development problems in kids

The average American child spends 3.6 hours staring at a computer, television, tablet, or smartphone daily -- an amount of screen time associated with inferior cognitive development and academic performance, according to a new study of over 4,500 children between the ages of eight and 11 published yesterday in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. The study was conducted by Canadian researchers, but examined children in the U.S. using the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth. Those guidelines recommend that children get nine to 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep, less than two hours of screen time and at least one hour of physical activity every day. The children who scored best on tests for assessing language abilities, memory, executive function, attention, and processing speed met those sleep, screen time and activity benchmarks. Nineteen out of 20 children in the U.S. failed to meet the lifestyle benchmarks. While about half met the sleep recommendation,...