One-year-old boys – but not girls – who watch TV for more than two hours a day are three times more likely to be diagnosed with autism by the age of three, according to a new Japanese scientific study.
Researchers at Yamanashi University, published in the American Journal of Pediatrics JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed data on 84,030 children aged one to three years.
Diagnoses in the autism spectrum were 3.5 times higher among children who watched television two to four hours a day than children who were not exposed to screens at all. One-year-old boys who watched television one to two hours a day were twice as likely to be diagnosed with autism by the age of three.
The more time spent in front of a screen, the greater the risk of being diagnosed with autism for boys, but the risk was not the same for girls. The autism rate at age three was 0.4% for both sexes, but boys were three times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
Skai
