Obesity
The American Academy of Pediatrics have been telling parents that media time (Television, gaming, electronics) should not surpass two hours daily for their kids (Sanghavi,2012). A research was done by Kaiser Family Foundation and average kids spend more than an hour online daily, more than an hour on video games and watch at least twice that much of television (Sanghavi, 2012).
Screen time has been blamed since the 1980s for the tripling obesity rates in children. In February 2012 a research was done in Texas and researchers reported their findings whether kids will lose weight if their regular games are replaced with an active alternative like Nintendo Wii console (Sanghavi,2012). The study entail 84 children that received the Wii consoles and one half of them were given exercise oriented games like EA Active and Wii Sports. This involves the players to move their arms, legs and body. While the other kids got inactive games like Madden NFL which doesn’t require that much body movement. The comparison of the result was disappointing, after months there was no proof that children that received more active games were indeed more active in general (Sanghavi, 2012).
An estimate of 12.5 million children between ages 2 and 19 are obese according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Genetics and diet may have played a crucial role in childhood obesity, but the CDC also believes that passive media viewing can play a role to this disease (Loop,2015). Hence, just sitting in front of a television playing video games can play a role in a child developing weight problems (Loop,2015).
Playing video game is largely passive for most children in contrast to playing on a playground or playing sports at the park. Television viewing is similar to the passive aspects of video games because they both take away physical activity and may lead to weight again (Loop,2015). For instance the American Academy of Pediatrics on its HealthyChildren.org website stated that children that five hours plus of television per day have a four and a half times greater risk of being overweight than those that watch two hours or less of television (Loop,2015).
Children's weight are greatly influenced by whether they have active video games and if there is a television in the bedroom, according to the results of two new studies. (CBC, 2014). A study was done and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and it showed that children who had a television in their bedroom gained weight (CBC, 2014).
A research was done by the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in New Hampshire uncovering a pattern of weight gain when studying children with televisions in their bedroom. 3,055 children, between the ages of 10 to 14, were surveyed over a four-year period (CBC, 2014). Children were asked questions like :
o Do you have a TV in your bedroom?
o On school days, how many hours a day do you usually watch TV (excluding video-game playing).
o On school days, how many hours a day to you usually spend playing video or computer games?
o How many movies to you watch on TV in a week?
From the children the surveyed :
· 59.1 per cent had bedroom televisions.
· Boys were eight per cent more likely to have a set in their room than girls.
· Children with bedroom TVs reported that their parents were less demanding.
· Children with bedroom TVs had an excess BMI gain of 0.24 between the two-year and four-year benchmarks, which translated to 0.4 kilograms/year.
The study result shows that children with televisions in their bedrooms gained more weight than their peers without a television (CBC, 2014).
Sources:
Sanghavi, D. (2012). Are TV and Video Games Making Kids Fat? Retrieved October 11, 2016, from http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2012/04/are_video_games_making_kids_fat_screen_time_and_childhood_obesity_.html
Loop, E. (2015, May 25). Do Video Games Contribute to Childhood Obesity? Retrieved October 11, 2016, from http://www.livestrong.com/article/376383-obesity-in-children-video-games/
CBC News. (2014,March 03). Children's weight affected by bedroom TVs, active gaming. Retrieved October 11, 2016, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/children-s-weight-affected-by-bedroom-tvs-active-gaming-1.2558270
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