Recently the World Health Organization (WHO) released new health guidelines for children under five years old. The WHO now recommends that caregivers limit “sedentary screen time” to no more than one hour per day. Although some may have thought these new recommendations were grounded in the unhealthiness of the looking at screens or the content kids are watching—that is not actually the case. The WHO has made it clear that these recommendations are about replacing the sedentary act of watching a screen with more active activities. The reports states, “Replacing restrained or sedentary screen time with more moderate- to vigorous intensity physical activity, while preserving sufficient sleep, can provide additional health benefits.” In spite of the WHO believing both screen-based sedentary time and non-screen based sedentary time are associated with outcomes like impaired motor, cognitive, and psychosocial development, it has not been able to confidently say whether one is worse tha...

MRI of adolescent brain activated during a memory task in the NIH study. Credit: Dr. Richard Watts and ABCD/Univ. of VT P.I. Dr. Hugh Garavan. Findings in a study by the National Institutes of Health offer an unexpected challenge to the common-sense notion that all time children spend in front of a screen is equally harmful. The study affirms that children’s consumption of general media, such as Internet, television, and video games, correlates with worse sleep and more family conflict. However, the data also indicates a correlation between greater use of social media, such as texting or scrolling through Instagram posts, with positive effects, such as increased physical activity, less family conflict, and fewer sleep problems. These findings are part of 30 terabytes of data released by the NIH with regard to the first 45 out of a total of 75 youth and their families who participated in the massive brain development study. Read more about this specific aspect of the study on...