Children who watch a lot of television do not have as healthy of sleeping habits as those who do not.
Researchers looked at 1,800 children between the ages of six-months and eight years and found a significant link between "television viewing and shorter sleep duration," a Massachusetts General Hospital news release reported.
Having a television in a child's room was found to decrease sleeping hours; this finding was especially prevalent in minority children.
The study subjects were members of Project Viva, which includes children and their mothers. The mothers were asked to report health and environmental factors when their children were about six months old and then once a year for the next seven years.
The participants were asked to report "how much time each day infants were in a room where a television was on, how much time older children watched television daily, whether children ages [four] to [seven] slept in a room where a TV was present and their child's average daily amount of sleep," the news release reported.
The seven-year-long study found that four each additional hour of television viewing children lost about seven minutes of sleep, although the link appeared to be stronger in boys than girls.
Racial and ethnic minority children were found to be more likely to have a television in their room, and this presence reduced the amount of sleep by about half-an-hour per day.
"The study authors note their results support previous short-term studies finding that both television viewing and sleeping in a room with a television decrease total sleep time, which can have negative effects on both mental and physical health," the news release reported.
"Elizabeth Cespedes, SM, of the HSPH Department of Nutrition is lead author of the Pediatrics report; and Elsie Taveras, MD, MPH, chief of General Pediatrics at MGHfC is senior author. Additional co-authors are Matthew Gillman, MD, SM, Ken Kleinman, ScD, and Sheryl Rifas-Shiman, MPH, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School; and Susan Redline, MD, MPH, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Project Viva is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," the news release reported.
