3-year-olds stare at screens for 4 hours

MORE than a quarter of three yearolds spend up to four hours a day in front of TVS, smartphones and tablets, according to research.

Screen time trebles from an average 53 minutes at the age of one to just over 150 minutes two years later.

For 27 per cent it soars to 240 minutes, four times the amount guidelines from the World Health Organisation, updated in April, advise for mental development.

Compared with children at nursery school, those at home are more than twice as likely to have excessive levels of screen time.

Dr Edwina Yeung, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland in the US, said: “Our results indicate screen habits begin early.”

Her study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is based on 4,000 American infants who were tracked up to the age of eight. It also found that children whose parents went to university were less at risk, as were girls rather than boys.

She added: “Interventions to reduce screen time could have a better chance if introduced early.” Her team analysed data from a study of children born in New York State from 2008 to 2010. Dr Yeung said: “Although New York has policies prohibiting infant screen exposure in day care centres, these are not yet nationwide and may aid in decreasing children’s screen time.”

Looking at screens for hours could damage children’s intelligence, sleep, mental health and vision, say experts, and is also linked to behavioural problems. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health recommended earlier this year that children should not use screens before bed. It said excessive screen time was linked to a less healthy

‘Interventions to reduce screen time could have a better chance if introduced early’

diet, a sedentary lifestyle and poorer mental health.

Now Dr Yeung and colleagues have shown potentially harmful levels of use begin as early as infancy. The American Academy of Paediatrics recommended children under 18 months should be introduced to screens slowly up to the age of five. Nine out of 10 in the study exceeded those recommendations.

In the UK, medical chiefs have advised banning phones at meals and at bedtime. Screen use has been blamed for fuelling obesity, with almost a third of two- to 15 year-olds overweight.