Associate Professor Asad Khan from UQ’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences spoke with Brisbane Times about the science of screen time.
How much screen time is too much for children? New research that set out to put a hard number on the amount of recreational screen time that is healthy for children found that two hours a day appears to be the upper limit for any screen use.
Led by researchers from UQ's School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, the research used a sample of more than 400,000 children from around the world across a number of separate studies to find out what effects screen time had on them.
They found that beyond two hours of recreational screen time, children experienced “serious physical and mental health consequences”.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Asad Khan said over two hours, children risked mental health consequences including feeling low, irritability, nervousness and sleeping difficulty, while physical complaints included headaches, abdominal pain, backache and dizziness.
