Kids, take note of this; it is for your own good to stay away, or limit, your videogaming!
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Posted: 17 May 2011
WASHINGTON: Teens who play a lot of video games are likely to sleep less than the eight to nine hours a night recommended for the age group, researchers said on Monday.
Speaking via teleconference from the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, researchers said that an analysis of data on 16,000 teens also found that youths who reported sleeping less than seven hours a night did not get enough exercise, which could also impact their health.
And not getting enough sleep is detrimental for all - and has a particularly negative effect on teens, added Caris Fitzgerald, a psychiatry resident at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences who led the study,.
A poor night's sleep can bring on a slew of ill effects, including low energy, poor concentration, moodiness, a greater tendency to act on impulse and more suicidal thoughts.
Yet only 10 percent of US teens get the recommended hours of shut-eye, according to the study, for which Fitzgerald and her fellow researchers analyzed the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's 2009 Youth Risk Behaviour Survey.
Because teens have "accelerated demands for growth and memory retention, very vital things with regard to the teen in their overall success," getting sufficient sleep is even more important for them, Fitzgerald said.
But they also struggle to do so more than adults.
"When it comes to teens, they have a lot of factors that affect them, from an ever greater quest for independence reflected by later bedtime; to expectations from parents and peers - like texting in the middle of the night," said Fitzgerald.
Teens' circadian rhythms don't help them in their quest for sleep either.
Their body rhythms put them on a schedule where they like to stay up late and sleep in each morning.
"But unfortunately the rest of society is not on that schedule and school is still going to start at 8:00 am," Fitzgerald said.
The researchers were unable to conclude there was a cause-effect relationship between sleep and online gaming or sport, but Fitzgerald pointed to "some evidence that reducing media exposure and increasing physical activity could increase the amount teens sleep."
The study did have one piece of good news for teens: watching television does not appear to affect sleep time.
- AFP/de
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Video gaming teens sleep less, says study
This is good! All kids must have this video game!
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Video games get kids to eat more veg, fruit
WASHINGTON : After being fingered as a key cause of the rising rate of US childhood obesity, video games got a reprieve Tuesday as a new study showed they can be used to encourage kids to eat healthier foods.
The study, conducted in the United States, where nearly one in five six- to 19-year-olds is obese, found that children who played certain "serious" video games - not the blockbuster blood-and-guts ones like "Black Ops" - increased the amount of fruit and vegetables they ate per day by around one serving.
That is a useful step towards fighting childhood flab because "increased fruit and vegetable intakes have been associated with decreased risk of obesity," says the study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Baylor College of Medicine professor Tom Baranowski, who led the study, said the video games "Escape from Diab" and "Nanoswarm," which were designed to change diet and physical activity behaviours to reduce the risk of becoming obese and diabetic, "motivated players to substantially improve diet behaviours.
"Diab and Nanoswarm were designed as epic video game adventures, comparable to commercial quality video games. These games incorporate a broad diversity of behaviour change procedures woven in and around engrossing stories," he said.
Playing both games several times "had a meaningful effect on dietary fruit and vegetable intake," the study found.
But while that was good news, the bad news was that the children did not get more exercise, and, even with their increased intake of healthy foods, they still failed to eat the doctor-recommended minimum daily amount of fruit and vegetables.
Health professionals recommend that children eat five servings a day of fruit or vegetables and get an hour of moderate to vigorous exercise.
"Serious video games hold promise, but their effectiveness and mechanisms of change among youth need to be more thoroughly investigated," said Baranowski.
The childhood obesity rate in the United States has tripled in 30 years, with experts blaming the rise on everything from a poor diet based on processed foods to kids spending too much time in front of the television or playing computer games when they could be outside exercising.
Obese children are more likely than their normal-weight counterparts to grow up to be obese adults, to suffer from a number of obesity-related conditions including diabetes, cadiovascular disease and fatty liver disease, and to die prematurely of any cause, various studies have found.
- AFP/il
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Video games get kids to eat more veg, fruit
