Smartphones and tablets 'disrupt children's sleep'

NHS: "Streaming instead of dreaming: Using phones and tablets before bed stops kids from sleeping and can lead to health issues" is the rather poetic headline from the Mail Online. A review of previous data found significant links between media devices like smartphones and tablets, and disrupted sleep in children.Researchers looked at data from more than 125,000 children and found a clear association between using media devices and sleep problems, such as not getting enough sleep at night, reduced sleep quality and daytime sleepiness.

Can children develop social and emotional skills digitally? (video)

Is screen time bad for children? How do kids learn emotions in digital environments? Do they learn empathy? Cognitive neuroscientist Katri Saarikivi and her team at the University of Helsinki are investigating, what makes the interactive situation so special and why it isn’t exactly the same when chatting, playing or communicating online.

Can children learn emotions in front of the screen?

Helsinki: Children’s increasing screen time concerns parents. Are these concerns warranted? And how does one boost the quality of digital activities? Learn more from this video on brain researchers describing their study of emotions. Parents are concerned about the violence and addictiveness of games. Many fear that too much time in front of the screen will stunt the child’s social and emotional development. Little research has been done in this field. “We don’t know whether or not digital devices are harmful to children,” says researcher Katri Saarikivi of the University of Helsinki Cognitive Brain Research Unit.

TV and gaming means trouble for teen boys' bones

Scimex: An international study has found that teenage boys who spend two to four, or more than six, hours in front of a screen during the weekend have poorer bone health. Teenage girls, however, seem to buck this trend, with the researchers reporting that girls who spent four to six hours watching a screen over the weekend actually had higher bone mineral density. Body fat distribution may help protect girls’ bones at this age, suggest researchers. Weekend screen time is linked to poorer teen bone health—but only in boys, reveals research published in the online journal BMJ Open. The apparent lack of impact of leisure screen time on teen girls’ bone health may be explained by their different body fat distribution, suggest the researchers.

Two hour screen limit for kids virtually impossible to enforce

University of Western Australia: A world-first longitudinal study by The University of Western Australia researchers examining the links between mental health and screen use by children and teenagers has found that guidelines to limit screen-based media-use to less than two hours a day are out of date and ‘virtually impossible' to enforce.