Children’s Mental Health Education

Healthy Lifestyles and Wellness Living

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3 effects of increased recreational screen time on kids

Ways to ensure your children perform well mentally, emotionally, and socially

In children, sound mental and physical health is a remedy for achieving developmental milestones throughout their childhood stages. It tends to assist the children to perform well academically (cognitively), have emotional wellbeing, and have good social skills.

Reduced screen time, healthy eating and eating rightly, getting enough sleep and sleeping well, staying physically active, and developing good and healthy habits and attitudes are five ways children perform well and better on mental and academic tests.

Such enhanced and superior cognitive function includes easy memorization, attentiveness, high processing speed, and efficient language usage.

A new study revealed that a child’s brainpower can be maximized by helping them develop good habits, including encouraging them to limit their recreational screen time to no more than two hours a day, get enough sleep, and stay physically active.

Negative effects of increased recreational screen time on children

There are negative effects and probable consequences of increased recreational screen time for kids. According to Jean-Philippe Chaput, PhD, of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, kids who have better cognitive function may succeed better in their life than those who don’t have.3 effects of increased recreational screen time on kids are:

1. Poor sleeping time and sleeplessness

The strongest link to the effects of increased screen time is sleeplessness. Increased screen time affects the sleeping time of children.

Jean-Philippe Chaput, of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, said that screen time before bed is bad for your sleep quality, but we also know that short sleepers tend to engage in more screen time.”

2. Poor cognitive function and performance

Kids in this study who met the screen time and sleep recommendations of not more than 2 hours per day performed better on a standardized writing test taken one year later with improved Math, Reading, and Writing.

According to Jean-Philippe Chaput, kids who have better cognitive function may succeed better in their life than those who don’t have.

3. Unhealthy lifestyle and behaviour

Apart from poor sleeping time and sleeplessness and poor cognitive function and performance particularly in Math, Reading, and Writing skills, they have unhealthy lifestyles and behaviour.

Read on

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This blog content on ‘Healthy Lifestyles and Wellness Living: Effects of increased recreational screen time on kids’ is categorized under Children’s Mental Health Education.

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