Children now spend 8 hours a day staring at screens
Lifestyles spark health fears
SCOTLAND’S youngsters are spending eight hours a day on their phones and devices instead of being active or going outdoors.
A leading child obesity expert said screen time is taking a ‘massive’ amount of children’s and teenagers’ time, replacing outdoor play over the past decade.
The 2021 Active Healthy Kids Report Card is a ‘state of the nation’ report on the physical activity and health of Scottish children and adolescents from 2018 to just before the pandemic.
It found total recreational screen time on weekdays is around nine hours per day in 11 to 15-year-old boys and around eight hours per day in girls of the same age.
The report has been published regularly for the past ten years but this is the first one to give total screen time, including TV, gaming and other activities.
It also shows the percentage of children exceeding two hours per day of non-gaming screen time, such as chatting online or using the internet, has soared from 51 per cent in girls and boys aged 11 in 2010, to 63 per cent of boys and 66 per cent of girls in 2018, the latest year for which figures are available.
John Reilly, professor of physical activity at Strathclyde University who led the project, said: ‘We have been publishing these report cards for ten years and things have got worse for children in physical activity and health; little has got better.’ The report found a lack of scientific data on the amount of active play children have.
However, Professor Reilly said: ‘Screen time is massive and has grown over the years. It has taken time away from other things like play and time outdoors.’
He added: ‘We suspect that socioeconomic differences in risk of obesity, which was already much more common in children from poorer families, will have widened further during the Covid-19 pandemic.’
Sedentary behaviour is linked to health problems including obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer.
A total of 30 per cent of children in Scotland aged two to 15 are overweight or obese.
Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘Two hours of screen time a day is what parents should aim for, with television banned from bedrooms and iPhones left downstairs at night.
‘Holyrood should take note of the research and ensure that schools include one hour of supervised daily activity split between the curriculum and onsite after-school.
‘One of the most concerning aspects of excessive screen time is sleep deprivation and its effect on mental health and obesity.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘As set out in our Programme for Government, we and sportscotland are working together to ensure that Active Schools programmes are free for all children and young people, providing them with more opportunities to take part in sport.’
He added that the Government is doing ‘everything possible to ensure adequate facilities are available to all’.