66 Unplugging health: Screen time insights from children in Newfoundland and Labrador
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Excessive digital screen time for children is linked to negative health outcomes, including increased adiposity, decreased sleep, and unhealthy diet. To reduce sedentary behaviour and mitigate these risks, the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth recommend limiting recreational screen time in this population to no more than two hours per day. Objectives This study aimed to assess adherence to digital screen time use recommendations in school-aged children in Newfoundland and Labrador, evaluate parental perceptions of screen time appropriateness, and explore the association between screen time and other health indicators and behaviours including anthropometric measures, sleep, physical activity, and diet. Design/Methods We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of a convenience sample of children aged nine to twelve years. Anthropometric measurements including body mass index and waist circumference were obtained. Participants and their parents completed questionnaires on sleep and screen time, and parents provided dietary recalls. Participants wore actigraphy watches to measure sleep and physical activity over one week. Results Twenty-two participants completed the study, with one being excluded due to an actigraphy malfunction. Fifty-seven percent identified as female and 71% as Caucasian. Sixty-seven percent of participants met the screen time guidelines on weekdays, compared to only 10% on weekends. Despite this, only 62% of parents perceived their child’s screen time as “Too High”. Meeting the screen time guideline on weekdays was associated with longer parent-reported sleep (p = .030) and actigraphy-measured sleep (p = .046) than those who did not. No significant differences were found between groups for self-reported sleep, body mass index, waist circumference, physical activity, or intake of energy, sugar, fruit, or caffeine. Conclusion A large portion of our small school-aged children cohort did not consistently meet the recommended screen time guidelines, particularly on weekends. Adherence to screen time recommendations may positively impact sleep duration. Parent perception of screen time use appropriateness did not always align with guideline adherence, highlighting an opportunity for education and intervention.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".