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Screen Time in Under-five Children

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Abstract

Context

Screen-viewing in childhood is primarily a mean of entertainment, during the unstructured time. We aimed to review the burden of the problem, delineate the associated factors and correlates, evaluate the impact of screen-time on the overall health of under-five children, and the interventions to reduce screen-time.

Evidence acquisition

Published articles from January 2009 to June 2018 were searched through PubMed, Clinical Key, Scopus, Embase, and Google Scholar using key Medical Subject Heading words.

Results

The burden of screen-time varied from 21% to 98% in the middle-income, and 10% to 93.7% in the high-income countries. The social ecological model was used to illustrate associated factors and correlates including child, caregiver, micro and macro digital-media environment related factors. The interventions included increase in the physical activity, reduction in the body mass index, improving sleep and dietary behaviors etc. The effectiveness of these interventions ranged from 0.3 minutes (standard error 13.3) to −47.16 minutes (standard error 2.01).

Conclusion

Clinicians should obtain history of screen-time in children, and advise limiting the screen exposure according to the child’s age. There is a need to generate evidence on burden and effectiveness of interventions among children in the Indian settings, owing to the limited data.

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Acknowledgement: Dr. Kamal Kishore, Lecturer, Department of Biostatistics, PGIMER for providing technical inputs in the methods of this review.

Funding

Funding: None.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India

    Nimran Kaur & Madhu Gupta

  2. Department of Pediatrics, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India

    Prahbhjot Malhi

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India

    Sandeep Grover

Authors
  1. Nimran Kaur
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  2. Madhu Gupta
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  3. Prahbhjot Malhi
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  4. Sandeep Grover
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Contributions

Contributors: MG: contributed to the methods and discussion section; NK, MG: jointly conceived the idea; NK, MG, SG, PM: assessed the studies for inclusion in the review; NK, MG: extracted the data; SG, PM: contributed in describing the related text of the studies; NK: wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All the authors provided technical inputs to improve the intellectual content of the manuscript and approved the final version of manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Madhu Gupta.

Additional information

Competing Interest: None stated.

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Kaur, N., Gupta, M., Malhi, P. et al. Screen Time in Under-five Children. Indian Pediatr 56, 773–788 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13312-019-1638-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13312-019-1638-8

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