Screen Burn

It does not matter whether it is TV or Video or Internet or Gaming.

Experts from the U.S. National Institutes of Health analyzed 173 studies done since 1980 in one of the most comprehensive assessments to date on how media exposure impacts the physical health of children and adolescents.

Across the board, they found that more media exposure leads to more obesity, smoking at an earlier age, earlier sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, as well as poorer school performance.

“I think we were pretty surprised by how overwhelming the number of studies was that showed this negative health impact,” NIH bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the researchers in the report released by the advocacy group Common Sense Media.

For example, in of the one studies, children who watched more than eight hours of TV per week at age 3 were more likely to be obese at 7.