July 19, 201010:44 am
posted by Aric Thorpe, MHR
Television and video games limit attention span
Children and late adolescents/early adults that spend more than three hours a day watching TV or playing video games via a console or computer are significantly more likely to have attention problems. The 13 month study composed of 1,323 participants found similar effects on attention span in children ages 6-12 and young adults ages 18-24. The cohort, interestingly, was composed of an equal numbers of male and female participants. 3.86 hours in front of the screen among the middle childhood cohort was associated with an odds ratio for developing attention problems of 1.81 (95% CI, 1.56 to 2.11). Among adolescents that spent a total of 4.36 hours in front of the screen, the odds ratio for attention problems was 2.04 (95% CI, 1.45 to 2.88). Edward Swing, MS, of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues, mentioned that the results would suggest that limiting television and video games to less than a collective 2 hours per day would decrease the associated lessening of attention span in these groups. Click here to read an article from The Examiner that discusses this study more.
