Less time on social media and quality sleep can help boost your child's brain power, researchers reveal.
A new study found too much time watching TV, surfing the internet or playing video games, hurts your child's brain development.
For the study, the team examined how much screen time, sleep and physical activity close to 4,500 children in the US were getting.
Children between the ages of eight and 11, who spent a lot of time on electronic devices, were found to have a 5% lower cognitive function than others in their age range.
Getting the right activity balance is crucial to a child's development, Dr Jeremy Walsh, of the CHEO Research Institute, Ottawa, told the Daily Mail.
"Behaviours and day-to-day activities contribute to brain and cognitive development in children and physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep might independently and collectively affect cognition," he is quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
Adding, "We found that more than two hours of recreational screen time in children was associated with poorer cognitive development."
Researchers say screen time does not stimulate the brain in the same way reading books do.
"Each minute spent on screens necessarily displaces a minute from sleep or cognitively challenging activities. In the case of evening screen use, this displacement may also be compounded by impairment of sleep quality," Dr Eduardo Esteban Bustamante, from the University of Illinois, USA, told the Daily Mail.
The findings were originally published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.
