Too much screen time is bad for the heart
The excessive use of electronic devices and watching a lot of TV are both associated with significant health risks for young children and adolescents, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.[1] In fact, too much screen time may follow children for their entire lives, influencing their risk of poor cardiovascular health well into adulthood.
“Limiting discretionary screen time in childhood and adolescence may protect long-term heart and metabolic health,” lead author David Horner, MD, PhD, a researcher at the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said in a statement. “Our study provides evidence that this connection starts early and highlights the importance of having balanced daily routines.”
Horner et al. reviewed data from more than 1,000 study participants who were either 10 or 18 years old. Overall, an extra hour of screen time appeared to increase a participant’s cardiometabolic risk score by a considerable amount—0.08 standard deviations for the 10-year-old participants and 0.13 for the 18-year-old participants.
“This means a child with three extra hours of screen time a day would have roughly a quarter to half a standard-deviation higher risk than their peers,” Horner explained. “It’s a small change per hour, but when screen time accumulates to three, five or even six hours a day, as we saw in many adolescents, that adds up.”
The group also used artificial intelligence to identify a “unique metabolic signature” in a patient’s blood that appears to be directly linked to screen time.
“We were able to detect a set of blood-metabolite changes, a ‘screen-time fingerprint,’ validating the potential biological impact of the screen time behavior,” Horner said. “Using the same metabolomics data, we also assessed whether screen time was linked to predicted cardiovascular risk in adulthood, finding a positive trend in childhood and a significant association in adolescence. This suggests that screen-related metabolic changes may carry early signals of long-term heart health risk.”
Click here to review the team’s full analysis.
Michael has more than 19 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.