Too much media could hurt kids' health: study

Children and teens spend about as much time with media as they do sleeping, and the overexposure could take a toll on their health, a new U.S. study suggests.

The study, reported in Monday's issue of the journal Pediatrics, showed Americans aged eight to 18 spend more than seven hours per day on average consuming both old media such as TV, movies and magazines as well as new media including Internet, social networking sites, video and computer games and cell phones. Dr. Victor Strasburger of the University of New Mexico reviewed studies on the combined effects of all the media consumption.

The study found exposure to the media can make children more prone to:

• Violence -- the impact of media violence on real-life aggressive behavior is 0.31 times higher, compared with 0.39 times for the link between smoking and lung cancer.
• Early and unprotected sexual activity, particularly if exposed to pornography.
• Alcohol and tobacco consumption, with exposure to smoking in movies in Grades 5 to 8 predicting the likelihood of starting smoking within eight years.
• Obesity, with possible culprits including the marketing of junk food and fast food and the tendency to eat while watching media.
• Heavy television-viewing -- that is, two to three hours a day in early childhood has been linked with attention-deficit disorder during the early school years, though experts disagree about the nature of the connection.