In the present study, a descriptive analysis of the data was carried out and various sociodemographic hypotheses were tested, as well as dietary habits and sedentary habits compared to the number of hours they watched television and / or played video games. The National Student Health Survey, carried out in Brazil, showed that 78% of adolescents were exposed to at least two hours a day of television [10]. In our study, the population was school aged between 9 and 10 years and the percentage of boys and girls who watched television or played video games at least 2 hours a day was 55%.
Stahlmann et al observed that children from single-parent families reported longer hours of television consumption (p < 0.001) [18]. In our study, no significant difference was observed in this regard (p = 0.476). However, the highest percentage of boys and girls who watched television over two hours was represented by those who lived with their father and a new partner (66.6%), followed by those who lived alone with their mother (46.7%).
There is scientific evidence linking the number of hours that children spend watching television with the omission of important meals during the day such as breakfast11. Specifically, in our study, no significant differences were obtained between the number of hours watching television and the weekly frequency of breakfast. However, it was found that almost half of children, who do not have breakfast, use to watch television or play video games during over two hours a day.
In this study, only 18% of boys and girls had breakfast every day of the week, a low rate compared to other studies carried out in Argentina [19], Spain [20] and Canada [21], where 75%, 77.5% and 85.5%, respectively, had breakfast daily. However, in the study carried out in Spain [20], 5.2% had fresh juices or whole fruits for breakfast; on the contrary in our study, this breakfast was taken by 24.4%. In the study carried out in Argentina19, 16% had a low-quality breakfast, based on industrial pastries and sugary foodstuffs, while in Italy [22], 31.3% of children had this type of breakfast. By comparison, among Uruguaiana schoolchildren, only 3.1% had industrial pastries or sugary foodstuffs for breakfast. This was particularly noteworthy so we can conclude that there were fewer children who used to have the habit of a daily breakfast but those who did, ate a healthier breakfast, mainly based on milk, bread, eggs and fruit or fresh fruit juices. The problem in this case was the lack of the breakfast habit, which may be related to educational and socioeconomic factors due to scarcity of resources.
In previous studies, watching television was associated with a higher intake of “fast food”, foodstuffs and foods rich in saturated fat, refined sugar, food colours and preservatives [23, 24, 25]. Overexposure to television and video games, in addition to leading a sedentary lifestyle, exposes children to the advertising of unhealthy products [26, 27]. In this study, no statistical significance was obtained between the number of hours spending watching television or playing video games and the type of breakfast that children used to have.
Statistical significance was obtained between the time spent watching television or playing video games and the frequency practising sports activities or physical exercise with their parents or other caregivers. This finding is similar to other ones found in previous studies, in which the important role of the family appears to be related to sedentary behaviours of children [28, 29, 30, 31]. In fact, parents' lifestyle habits are the main predictors of the time spent watching television by schoolchildren [32, 33, 34]. Bjelland et al. concluded that parental support and also their teaching and accompaniment in physical exercise decreased the time spent watching television or playing video games among European children [35, 36, 37, 38].
Another of the determining factors related to television and video game consumption is age and gender [39, 40]. Regarding age, no differences were observed in this study, because there was hardly any variability, but on the other hand, there was a significant association between the times spent watching television and gender. Boys were more likely to watch over two hours on television or playing video games during the day than girls, as around 60% of them watched television during less than two hours a day.
Limitations
The intention of this study was to evaluate the sedentary behaviours of schoolchildren and their correlation with various sociodemographic and lifestyle factors. Children were asked to fill in the data related to his/her weight and height fin order to determinate their body mass index. There was a very low response rate because children uncovered these data. The body mass index could have been compared to sedentary habits, if we had had a higher response rate. Therefore, as a proposal for improvement for the next study, it is recommended personally size and weigh the children. It is also intended to include parents to expand the variables, as well as to contrast the information reported by the scholars.