Early Childhood Health, National Kidney Foundation of Michigan, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
Child Care Health Dev. 2021 Sep;47(5):618-626. doi: 10.1111/cch.12869. Epub 2021 Apr 16.
Sleep is increasingly recognized as a vital part of health. Screen time has been linked to sleep quality in children. The purpose of this study was to analyze associations between screen time and sleep characteristics among low-income preschoolers.
A total of 1,700 preschool-aged children participated in this study at 50 federally and state-funded preschool centers in Michigan. Baseline measurement for an ongoing longitudinal intervention trial was obtained for cross-sectional use. At baseline, parents reported the number of hours their child spent engaging in screen time on a typical week day and weekend. An aggregate measure of total screen time was created. Parents reported on the quality of their child's sleep, how often they were tired during the day, and whether they had difficulty falling asleep. A mixed model linear regression was created to analyze data.
Controlling for child's age, race, and parental income, children who engaged in more screen time were significantly more likely to have more trouble falling or staying asleep, be tired during the day, and had worse quality of sleep (P values = .004, .006 and .001, respectively). Spearman correlations of screen time, sleep variables and demographics show parents of Black children reported significantly higher weekly screen time than parents of non-Black children (r = 0.23, P < .001) and that tiredness was associated with Black race (r = 0.15, P < .001), Hispanic/Latino ethnicity (r = -0.14, P < .001), and parental education (r = 0.06, P = .016).
This report confirms prior associations between screen time and sleep reported in other pediatric populations. Further research is needed to confirm these results in other populations using more rigorous measures of screen time, sleep, and physical activity, as well as longitudinal assessments. Despite these limitations, findings suggest that interventions to help parents limit children's screen time and impact their sleep health merit investigation.
睡眠越来越被认为是健康的重要组成部分。屏幕时间已与儿童的睡眠质量相关联。本研究的目的是分析低收入学龄前儿童的屏幕时间与睡眠特征之间的关联。
共有 1700 名学龄前儿童参与了密歇根州 50 个联邦和州立学前中心的这项研究。正在进行的纵向干预试验的基线测量用于横断面使用。在基线时，父母报告了孩子在典型工作日和周末花费在屏幕时间上的小时数。创建了一个总屏幕时间的综合度量。父母报告了孩子的睡眠质量，白天疲劳的频率，以及入睡是否困难。创建了混合模型线性回归来分析数据。
在控制孩子的年龄、种族和父母收入的情况下，屏幕时间较长的孩子更有可能入睡或保持睡眠困难、白天疲劳以及睡眠质量较差（P 值分别为 0.004、0.006 和 0.001）。屏幕时间、睡眠变量和人口统计学的Spearman 相关显示，黑人儿童的父母报告的每周屏幕时间明显高于非黑人儿童的父母（r = 0.23，P < 0.001），疲劳与黑人种族（r = 0.15，P < 0.001）、西班牙裔/拉丁裔（r = -0.14，P < 0.001）和父母教育程度（r = 0.06，P = 0.016）相关。
本报告证实了先前在其他儿科人群中报告的屏幕时间与睡眠之间的关联。需要进一步的研究来使用更严格的屏幕时间、睡眠和体力活动测量方法以及纵向评估来确认其他人群中的这些结果。尽管存在这些限制，但研究结果表明，帮助父母限制孩子的屏幕时间并影响他们的睡眠健康的干预措施值得研究。
