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Few kids meeting TV-time standards

Only 27 percent of kids ages 12 to15 meet the recommended limit of two hours or less of TV plus computer use daily, new government statistics show.

And 7 percent of kids this age reported watching five hours or more a day of TV, while 5 percent said they used a computer for five hours or more, according to the 2012 data analyzed by the National Center for Health Statistics.

At the other end of the spectrum, just less than 2 percent reported no daily TV viewing, and 9 percent reported no computer use.

This is the first time that this particular age group’s screen-use habits have been examined using this combined set of sources, “so there’s no real trend data to say that, yes, these kids are watching more TV or less,” says Kirsten Herrick, a NCHS epidemiologist and lead author of the new report.

Herrick says getting an accurate read on the extent of kids’ screen-usage is complicated by all the new technologies now available. “We don’t know, for example, how kids would have categorized watching TV on a cellphone. Technology has outpaced our ability to capture (usage), so we might have an overestimation or an underestimation. We’re really not sure.”

Excessive screen-time use has been linked to elevated blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and being overweight or obese among kids, the report notes. Screen-time behavior established in adolescence has been shown to continue into adulthood, it adds.

As a result, the American Academy of Pediatrics says children and teens should engage with entertainment media for no more than one or two hours per day, and the media content should be of “high quality.”

© 2014 USA TODAY. All rights reserved.



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