More than two hours on screen ‘can harm’ child cognitive skills

CHILDREN who spend more than two hours a day looking at a screen have worse than average memory, language skills and attention span, a landmark study has found.

The research, involving children aged between eight and 11, found that those with higher amounts of recreational screen time had much worse cognitive skills across a range of functions.

The study, published by The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, tracked the daily habits of 4,500 children who were then asked to carry out detailed cognition tests. It found that more than two hours a day of recreational screen time was associated with worse memory, processing speed, attention levels, language skills and executive function.

The study of US children, led by the University of Ottawa, recorded the time spent sleeping, using smartphones and other devices, and physical activity.

Overall cognition skills were best among the one in 20 children who got between nine to 11 hours of sleep, less than two hours of recreational screen time, and at least an hour’s exercise daily. These children did around 5 per cent better in the tests than the average child. Significantly, the study isolated screen time as the likely key factor.

Children who were glued to their screens for less than two hours a day saw performance around 4 per cent better than the average among their group, regardless of other habits. Dr Jeremy Walsh, the lead researcher, told The Daily Telegraph: “We’ve set a clear two-hour benchmark here and it shows clear cognitive benefit is associated with keeping within that limit.”

It comes as The Telegraph campaigns for a statutory duty of care on all social media and online gaming companies.