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Researchers Say Young Children Who Watch More TV Get Less Sleep

BOSTON (CBS) - For years, pediatricians have been advising parents to limit screen time for young kids. Now, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have found that preschoolers who watch TV sleep less than those who don't.

They looked at 470 preschoolers from western Massachusetts and equipped them with wrist monitors to record their sleep. They found that preschoolers who watch less than one hour of TV per day get 22 more minutes of sleep a night than those who watch TV longer. That's about 2½ hours more a week.

They also found that more than a third of 3- to 5-year-olds have TVs in their bedrooms and a third of those kids fell asleep with the TV on. Kids without TVs in their bedrooms slept 30 minutes more a night than kids with a TV in their room.

It is generally recommended that kids ages 2 to 5 watch no more than one hour of high-quality programming a day.

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