Lots of TV, video, Web harms kids' health

Spending a lot of time watching TV, playing video games and surfing the Web makes children more prone to a range of health problems including obesity and smoking, US researchers said yesterday.

US National Institutes of Health, Yale University and the California Pacific Medical Center experts analyzed 173 studies done since 1980 in one of the most comprehensive assessments to date on how exposure to media sources impacts the physical health of children and adolescents.

The studies, most conducted in the United States, largely focused on television, but some looked at video games, films, music, and computer and Internet use. Three quarters of them found that increased media viewing was associated with negative health outcomes.