Too much time online?

Sweet dreams? Everyone knows that there’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep, but for many children, the rapid increase in use and availability of digital devices has meant that they’re simply not getting enough shut-eye.

Most of us are guilty of being glued to our screens for far too long, and almost all parents worry about children’s exposure to devices, but evidence gathered from around Europe and further afield, shows that there are some big implications for children’s health from spending too much time online.

Professor John Reilly and his team at the Department of Psychological Sciences & Health at Strathclyde have been involved in a 2024 European research network (SUNRISE Study Europe) looking more closely at screen time, physical activity and sleep.

John had already contributed to the World Health Organisation’s 2019 Physical Activity, Screen Time and Sleep guidelines which recommends that on a daily basis, three to four-year-olds should have at least three hours of physical activity, less than one hour of screen time and between 10 and 13 hours of sleep.

Sobering statistics are a wake-up call

In the research study, which included 14 European countries (not Scotland or the wider UK), the main question asked was:

'What percentage of families and children meet the WHO guidelines?'

The findings indicated that only 54% of European three to four-year-olds got enough physical activity and 50% spent too much time in front of screens. These sobering statistics are a wake-up call, potentially for the whole world. A recent study from the same group found that two-thirds of three-year-olds in urban Malawi spent too much time in front of a screen.

Far from being an exercise in condemnation about poor policy development from governments across Europe (or indeed of parental management of children’s screen time), it is recognised by all involved that access to the online world can be a good thing for children. However, it’s simply better for their health and development if screen time is limited. If it isn’t, an entire generation of children are at risk of obesity (with all its long term socio-economic implications), poor physical fitness, adverse brain development and cognition, and a greater likelihood of mental health and behavioural problems. It’s simple, really, physically fit kids have much better physical and mental health.

Improving long-term health outcomes

Several European countries are already collecting data to monitor their children’s behaviour and health (for example, Slovenia has long-running data collection, monitoring and evaluation) for the purpose of developing and implementing policies which will ultimately improve long-term health outcomes for our wee people.

All of the UK’s home nations have explored implementation of the WHO’s screen time guidelines, but to date, policy development simply hasn’t happened. In Scotland, where we don’t have our troubles to seek with public health, there is only limited monitoring of children’s physical health, and this absence potentially presents an even bigger problem in the long-term.

For Professor Reilly and his team, it seems unlikely that individuals alone can be expected to take control of screen time. A more obvious solution is that governments and national health providers introduce legislation and monitoring, plus public health education and advice about the dangers of too much screen time in the same way that they once did with smoking and road safety – as well as public health tracking at a national level of young children’s activity to put the most effective interventions in place.

Until that happens, perhaps we can only dream of better short and long term health for our children.