Brief CommunicationHome vs. bedroom media devices: socioeconomic disparities and association with childhood screen- and sleep-time
Introduction
Excessive screen-time and shorter sleep duration have important implications for children's health [[1], [2], [3], [4]]. The widespread use of mobile devices and the popularization of screen media devices in the bedroom are likely to be responsible for the substantially increased in childhood screen-time over the years [5].
Increased screen-time and its adversely impact on school-aged children's sleep have been consistently reported before [6], but less is known about this association in preschool-aged children [7]. Moreover, the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and screen-time in children is not well characterized and requires further attention, but studies suggest that screen use is more likely among children with low parental SES than among children with higher SES backgrounds [8,9].
The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to assess traditional and new media devices ownership in the house vs. in children's bedroom according to SES and 2) to explore the associations between screen media ownership with screen- and sleep-time on week and weekend days.
Section snippets
Methods
Data were derived from the ObesInCrisis Project, designed to study the impact of the socioeconomic crisis in childhood obesity and related determinants. During 2016-17, a total of 8430 Portuguese pre- and school-aged children (n = 2397 between 3 and 5 years, 51.6% boys; n = 6033 between 6 and 10 years, 50.4% boys) were recruited from public and private schools, in the cities of Porto, Coimbra and Lisbon; details are available elsewhere [9]. Participation rates were 60% in Porto, 58% in Coimbra
Results
Screen devices at home were: television (home: 99.5%, of which 36.7% in the bedroom), laptop (home: 82.1%; bedroom: 6.4%), tablet (home: 81.6%; bedroom: 19.5%) and computer (home: 32.9%; bedroom: 8.9%). Similar results were found for boys and girls, except for having a computer in the bedroom which was significantly more common for boys than girls (10.1% and 7.7%, respectively, p = 0.04). Independently of sex, owning a computer, a laptop and a tablet was significantly more common among children
Discussion
The present study identified that higher-SES children had more media equipment at home compared with children from lower-SES; however, the inverse was found for the availability of those devices in the children's bedroom. Similar findings were previously reported, were electronic devices were more likely to be located in lower-SES children's bedrooms [[11], [12], [13]]. This suggest that the socioeconomic differences in Portuguese children's screen media-time [9] may be driven primarily by
Funding
This study was supported by a grant from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal [grant number PTDC/DTP-SAP/1520/2014]; COMPETE 2020, Portugal 2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI), União Europeia by the Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER).
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Daniela Rodrigues: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Augusta Gama: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Aristides M. Machado-Rodrigues: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Helena Nogueira: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Vítor Rosado-Marques: Investigation, Writing – original draft,
Acknowledgements
We thank all the Directors of the schools, the teachers directly involved and the parents of the children who accepted to participate in this project.
References (20)
- et al.
Associations of screen time, sedentary time and physical activity with sleep in under 5s: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Sleep Med Rev
(2020) - et al.
Electronic media use and sleep in school-aged children and adolescents: a review
Sleep Med
(2010) - et al.
Youth screen media habits and sleep: sleep-friendly screen-behavior recommendations for clinicians, educators, and parents
Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am
(2018) - et al.
Prevalence and risk factors for overweight and obesity in Portuguese children
Acta Paediatr
(2005) - et al.
Longitudinal associations between television in the bedroom and body fatness in a UK cohort study
Int J Obes
(2017) - et al.
Systematic review of the relationships between sedentary behaviour and health indicators in the early years (0–4 years)
BMC Publ Health
(2017) - et al.
Media multitasking is associated with higher body mass index in pre-adolescent children
Front Psychol
(2019) The common sense census: media use by kids age zero to eight, report
- et al.
Association between portable screen-based media device access or use and sleep outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis
JAMA Pediatr
(2016) - et al.
Increasing socioeconomic disparities in sedentary behaviors in Chinese children
BMC Publ Health
(2019)