key: cord-0945178-cjwbck1g
authors: McArthur, Brae Anne; Racine, Nicole; Browne, Dillon; McDonald, Sheila; Tough, Suzanne; Madigan, Sheri
title: Recreational screen time before and during COVID‐19 in school‐aged children
date: 2021-06-15
journal: Acta Paediatr
DOI: 10.1111/apa.15966
sha: 2a21e9f485e8ecebe7beb55048b833ee63281656
doc_id: 945178
cord_uid: cjwbck1g

Strategies used to restrict the spread of COVID-19, such as school closures and limited extracurricular activities, have resulted in shifts in children's sedentary behaviors1 and increases in screen time have largely been assumed. One limitation of the existing research is that it is either cross-sectional1 or uses national norms as a comparison2 . Longitudinal cohorts with pre-COVID-19 estimates are needed to examine within-person changes in recreational screen time, to inform policy and practice efforts.

Participants (n = 1333) were from All Our Families, a cohort of mothers and children from Calgary, Canada. 4 Data, herein, include maternal surveys collected when the child was age 5 (2014-2016) and 8 years (2017-2019), and maternal (May-July 2020) and child (9.5 years; July-August 2020) COVID-19 surveys. The institutional ethics board approved this study.

As detailed in Table 1 Note: Adjusted models were run controlling for child age (M = 9.85, SD = 0.78, range 9 -11 years), sex (47.6% female), ethnicity (83.1% White), and household income at COVID-19 (84.6% ≥$80,000 Canadian). The pattern of results remained the same with and without covariates.

Abbreviation: ∆, change. a At the 5year, 8year, and COVID-19 waves mothers reported the range of time their child spent using electronic devices (ie watching television programmes; movies, videos, or stories on a VCR or DVD player; using a computer, gaming system, or other screen-based devices) on a typical weekday and weekend day outside of schoolwork (ie recreational use). At the COVID-19 wave children also self-reported. A weighted average across week and weekend days and electronic devices was calculated to yield screen use in hours/week. Outliers greater than 4 SDs from the mean were winsorised (n = 6 at 5 years, and n = 11 at 8 years 

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