Over 75% of 3 and 4-year-olds in Europe get too much screen time and not enough sleep and exercise

Three in four young children in Europe get too much screen time and not enough sleep and daily movement, according to a new global analysis.

According to international benchmarks, children under 5 should get three hours per day of physical activity, including at least an hour of intense exercise, as well as a maximum of one hour of screen time and 10 to 13 hours of sleep.

But across 33 countries globally, just 14.3 per cent of three and four-year-olds meet all of those standards, according to the study published in JAMA Pediatrics, which included about 7,000 children.

While 81 per cent get enough sleep, just 41.8 per cent meet screen time recommendations and 49.2 per cent get enough physical activity.

Given early childhood is a "critical window of opportunity" to establish healthy habits, the findings have serious implications for the "lifelong health and well-being" of people around the world, according to the researchers led by the University of Wollongong in Australia.

"It's really important that we look at the extent to which children are meeting these guidelines across different countries," Dr Sarah Rose, a developmental psychologist and associate professor at the University of Staffordshire in the United Kingdom, told Euronews Health. She was not involved with the new study.

"This evidence is the sort of thing that we need to hopefully bring about some change for the children".

Regional differences

The rates are slightly better in Africa and Europe, where about a quarter of kids (23.9 and 23.5 per cent, respectively) meet all three benchmarks.

Half of European children (50 per cent) have sufficiently limited screen time, while 53.5 per cent of kids get enough exercise, and nearly all of them (94.7 per cent) get enough sleep.

Notably, European girls are more likely than boys to meet screen time guidelines, but they are less likely to get enough exercise, the study found.

At the regional level, North and South America have both the best and worst habits. While two in three kids get enough physical activity – higher than any other region – children there also have the most screen time by far, with just 17 per cent meeting recommendations.

"Sometimes people make assumptions that if a child is spending lots of time sat in front of the screen, they're not engaging in physical activity, whereas actually this data presents a more nuanced picture than that," Rose said.

It’s likely that trends in physical activity and screen time start even earlier in life, given previous research shows that just a quarter of children under 2 years old are meeting screen time recommendations.

Too much screen time is also linked to health issues. The more time 1-year-olds spend on screens, the more likely they are to have developmental delays when they’re 2 and 4 years old – though it’s not yet clear that the screen time actually causes the problems.

Steps to curb kids' harmful screen time

Several European nations are pushing for limitations on children’s screen time. In September, Sweden’s public health agency recommended banning screens for kids under 2, following similar guidance in Ireland for babies up to 18 months old.

Meanwhile, the French government says kids under 3 should have no screen time, and that up until 6 it should be “strongly limited”.

Other countries, such as China, have gone even further by restricting, for example, online games that target young people.

Yet screen-time bans may not always be realistic, given digital technology is everywhere in daily life, according to researchers from Lund University in Sweden.

After studying the daily digital habits of young children, they concluded that it is "nearly impossible" to keep young kids away from screens and that a zero-tolerance approach may simply make parents feel worried or ashamed about their kids’ screen use, rather than help them cut back.

Rose also said that screen time guidelines can be overly simplistic, given they typically don't take into account the quality of what kids are doing on their devices.

"Screen time can be such a range of different activities, and those activities can have different values for the children engaged with them," Rose said, for example video-calling with grandparents or watching educational TV.

"I think that what parents would really value is supportive guidance about how to use screen time in a healthy way with their children," Rose said.