P3A361: The Association of Screentime and the Components of Cardiometabolic Health in 10-19 Year Olds- a Systematic Review

Background: Screen Time has become more pervasive in our everyday life, especially among children. In the past, children's exposure to screen time was through television, in which they had an average of two hours a day. This increased to three hours a day in the 21st century. With the advent of smartphones and portable mobile devices, screen time has become a dominant exposure amongst children. As a result, screen time has replaced traditional leisure time. Metabolic parameters for this age group have also worsened, including increases in obesity, insulin resistance, as well as other factors including liver enzymes and waist circumference .

Methods: We searched scientific databases including Pubmed, Google Scholar, CINAHL, and Embase that included studies published between 2000-2022. Studies needed to include the keywords blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol, or hemoglobin A1C along with screen time. Acceptable study designs included RCTs, cohort, prospective and case control studies, but were excluded if participants had congenital cardiovascular conditions, were smokers, pregnant, or had a history of kidney disease. A total of 985 studies were narrowed down to 107 studies following abstract review. An additional 97 studies were excluded either because they did not address the cardiovascular endpoints of interest. At the conclusion of the search, 10 studies were eligible for inclusion.

Results: They demonstrated strong positive linear associations between daily adolescent screen-time usage and development of increased systolic and diastolic blood pressure, increased BMI and waist circumference, as well as increased LDL and triglyceride levels independent of cardiorespiratory fitness level and sedentary activity. They also demonstrated a negative association between screen-time and HDL levels in adolescents.

Conclusion: The last few decades have shown an increase in both screen time as well as worsening metabolic parameters in the pediatric population. The preponderance of literature has shown a moderate association linking excessive screen-time in children and adolescents with worsening cardiometabolic parameters, notably systolic and diastolic blood pressure, BMI and waist circumference, triglyceride and cholesterol levels, as well as liver enzymes. Our data suggests that increased levels of screen time negatively affect cardiometabolic risk factors in the adolescent population independent of sedentariness and cardiovascular fitness