Too much TV can give your kid cancer

If youngsters get daily exercise, the increasing hours sat watching TV, playing computer games or surfing the internet could put them at a much higher risk of getting cancer in adult life, experts have warned.

Doctors fear that long spells of inactivity while glued to a screen may lead to childhood obesity and the associated health dangers, and now they are calling on parents to restrict the amount of time kids watch telly or play computer games to less than two hours a day and delay the age they start allowing toddlers to become viewers.

Experts have long been concerned about inactive children and obesity, but the World Cancer Research Fund has issued a fresh warning over kids who exercise and still turn to games and the TV, the Mirror reported.

According to the charity’s head of health information Kate Mendoza, people often assume sedentary behaviour is the same as physical inactivity, but someone can do the recommended amount of daily physical activity and still be sedentary.

Mendoza said that children may well get plenty of physical activity at school through sports or playing but if they spend a lot of time sitting down at home they might develop habits which could increase their risk of diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes in the future, and by reducing their sedentary time children will lessen their chances of becoming obese.

According to figures from research agency Childwise, children spent an average of 5.9 hours a day in front of the TV, a games console or a computer last year.

The internet helped boost that figure.

A decade ago 21 per cent of kids had never been online, but today that number is down to just 1 percent.