Study: TV Again Tied to Poor Sleep in Kids, Especially Latinos and Other Minorities

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Kids who spend the most amount of time watching TV have shorter bouts of sleep, which impacts physical and mental health, especially among minority kids, according to a new study.

The study, by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, examined the associations of TV viewing and bedroom TV sets with sleep duration from infancy to mid-childhood among 1,864 children—35% minorities.

From age 6 months to 7 years, kids’ average sleep duration decreased from 12.2 to 9.8 hours a day; TV viewing increased from 0.9 hours to 1.6 hours per day, examiner.com reports.

By age 7, 23% of kids had a bedroom TV set.

Bedroom TV was associated with 31 minutes per day less sleep among racial/ethnic minority children.

Elizabeth Cespedes, the study’s lead author, according to Fox News said it’s hard to know why minority children would be more affected by having a TV in the bedroom.

“At all time points, racial and ethnic minority children in our study were sleeping a bit less and watching more television,” Cespedes.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against watching television for children who are under the age of two and to keep TV time for older children limited to one hour a day.