United States: A new study has recently found that spending too much time on your phone, computer, or TV when you’re really very young could make it harder to stay healthy as you get older.
Researchers and health experts looked at over almost 4,000 young adults for more than thirty years and found that those who watched a lot of TV in their 20s had a higher chance of having a heart attack later in life. Dr. Jason Nagata, who actually led the study, said that spending too much time on screens can seriously affect your heart health as you grow up.
Expert Warnings on Screen Time
As reported by HealthDay, “More screen time can displace important activities like sleep and physical activity,” he added. “This underscores the importance of promoting healthy screen habits early in life to prevent future heart disease and stroke.”
Nagata who is an associate professor at the University of California, San Franisco’s Division of the Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine.
The new data is from the Coronary Artery Risk and Development in Young Adults study in which thousands of adults have been followed for years.
Staggering Statistics
Each increased hour of watching television by the time participants were 23 years old was associated with 26% increased odds of getting heart disease over the period of the study. It was also associated with 16 percent increase of the risk of heart attacks and/or stroke, the UCSF team noted.
The Bigger Picture
Screen time wasn’t only dangerous in youth: In middle-aged people meanwhile, each extra hour of daily television watching also increased the chances of having CHD by 55 percent, stroke by 58 percent, and overall heart disease by 32 percent, according to the study.
WHAT THIS MAY INDICATE IS THAT ‘screen time in young adulthood leads to the path of more screen consumption in the later years of adulthood’, Nagata remarked on a UCSF news release.