Brazilian research shows that poor diet among young people is linked to excessive screen time

Researchers from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) concluded that the excessive time that teenagers spend on cell phones, video games, televisions or computers is closely associated with poor quality in the diet of these young people. A high risk of overweight is linked to long periods of time in front of screens and poor quality of sleep of shorter duration.

How the research was carried out

Research carried out in public schools in Curitiba showed that 74.4% of students who underwent the assessment spend more than two hours a day on screens. In other words, of the 1,200, three out of every four exceed the two-hour daily limit determined for younger people, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The study was carried out as follows, 1,200 students aged between 10 and 19 were evaluated. To analyze screen time, they had to do this separately for three types of devices: television, video game and other portable devices. Thus, each student stipulated how often they used each of the devices and allowed time to calculate the weekly average in which they used each of them.

After dealing with the time they spent on their devices, it was time to talk about their diet. They answered a questionnaire about what their eating habits were and how often they consumed certain items, this made it easier for them to classify the quality of the students' diet. Adaptations were made for some variables, such as gender, age, physical exercise and each person's income from school.

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_{chocolates and sweets (Photo: reproduction/Getty Images Embed)}

After the survey results, the device on which they spent the most time was the television (56.5%), secondly the laptops (53.2%) and finally the video game (22%). What they realized is that bad eating habits and a bad diet are closely linked to time spent in front of the television. The consumption of ultra-processed and unhealthy foods is what is most associated with excessive TV viewing.

A nutritionist's opinion

According to nutritionist Mieko, the evidence that spending more time on screens is directly related to the lack of good nutrition and lack of physical exercise only further highlights a growing health problem in the Brazilian population, and that with these data, public policy measures could be taken.

Featured photo: girl using her cell phone (reproduction/Spencer Platt/Getty Images Embed)