Prevalence of excess screen time among secondary school children in rural India.

Introduction: Screen time has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among children and teenagers. This has come at the expense of their healthy eating habits, physical activity and adequate amount of quality sleep. The excessive use of screen-device can lead to addiction which starts during adolescent years. Objectives: Primary Objective: to assess prevalence of excess screen time among secondary school children; Secondary Objective: to correlate Body Mass Index (BMI), sleep duration, duration of physical activity and food habits with screen time duration.

Material and methods: Study settings and design: cross-sectional study was conducted in secondary schools in the rural field practice area of a private medical college in Pune, India. The study included 184 school children from eighth to tenth standard. Data was collected using a self-administered, questionnaire.

Results: Prevalence of excess screen time among secondary school children was 83.2%. Mobile phone was the most used device (98.9%). There was a significant association between excess screen time and inadequate sleep.

Conclusions: The present study reports high prevalence of excess screen time in rural school going children in rural India. There is a need for strategies to combat this in school health programs on priority.