SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) - We already know that too much screen time is bad for young adults when it comes to socialization, but new research has revealed some troubling long-term health effects as well.
The research, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine , studied TV habits of young men and women dating back all the way to the 1980s.
"So this is a study that began in the 1980s with over 4,000 young adults who started off at around age 18 to 30, and we tracked their television viewing habits over the course of the next 30 years," lead author Dr. Jason Nagata, Adolescent Medicine Specialist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, told KCBS Radio's Bret Burkhart on this week's episode of "As Prescribed."
The first thing researchers discovered is that our habits early on stay with us for a lifetime.
"TV viewing habits are really set in young adulthood," said Dr. Nagata. "The amount of TV that these young adults were watching was the same amount of TV that they continued to watch into their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s."
More concerning, however, the researchers found that more time in front of the tube increased the risk for earlier-in-life cardiovascular events, including coronary heart disease.
"We found that the amount of television or screen time people were viewing back in young adulthood was predictive of their risk of early heart attacks and strokes," Dr. Nagata said. "So by the age of 60, people who had more hours of television viewing back when they were in their early 20s actually did have a higher risk of having heart attacks and other cardiovascular disease events."
Researchers identified three factors impacting tech time related to heart health, and they all have to do with being sedentary in front of a screen.
"For the most part, people aren't being active and they aren't exercising during that screen viewing time," said Dr. Nagata. "If you're watching three or four hours of television, that's three or four hours that you could otherwise have been exercising or walking outside."
Increased TV viewing has also been linked with poorer nutrition and overeating, since "you're kind of distracted. You may not be really paying attention to your hunger cues," Dr. Nagata said.
"The last mechanism is actually the displacement of sleep," Dr. Nagata added. "And I do think one of the culprits, especially in modern times, are cell phones and screens because, you know, people are, if you're watching a screen right before bedtime, that tends to be more activating and it takes you longer to kind of wind down."
The silver lining is that you can take action to protect your mental and physical health from the harmful influence of technology, which can be both addictive and enmeshed in our lives in essential ways.
"It's really important that we pay attention to some of the lifestyle behaviors we have in adolescence and young adulthood, because they can add up over decades to lead to heart disease and other important conditions when we're older," Dr. Nagata said.
One helpful tool is establishing a family media plan for your household that sets limits on screens.
"We often have these rules that we try to apply to our children and teenagers. But, you know, we as adults all live in a very screen heavy environment as well. And our studies have shown that one of the biggest predictors of teenage screen use is actually their parents' screen use. Even if we think they're not watching, they really are. And they're mimicking our behaviors," Dr. Nagata added. "So we have to practice what we preach."
Listen to this week's "As Prescribed" to learn more. You can also listen to last week's episode about how to avoid suffering through menopause, here .
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“As Prescribed” is sponsored by UCSF.
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