OBJECTIVE: Screen-based behaviours such as watching television or computer use are among the most prevalent sedentary behaviours adolescents spend time on. There is a lack of recent estimates on prevalence and changes in the amount of time spent on screen-based behaviour across Central and Eastern Europe. The main aim is to assess the trends in the prevalence of current recommendations for the screen time (≤2 hours per day) of school-aged children in the Czech Republic between 2002 and 2014. METHODS: We used an internationally established methodology based on the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HSBC) study. Data was derived from Czech national representative samples of 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds collected in the years 2002 (N=4,065), 2006 (N=4,170), 2010 (N=3,962) and 2014 (N=4,338). RESULTS: The results indicated that the boys and girl surveyed in 2014 are up to two times more likely to meet the current recommendations for watching television in comparison with groups of schoolchildren of the same age surveyed in 2002. In contrast, computer use by adolescents increased markedly between 2006 and 2014. Taking total screen time into account, spending two hours per day or less on it decreased significantly among boys (OR=0.74, 95% CI=0.62-0.89) and girls (OR=0.80, 95% CI=0.70-0.92) between 2006 and 2014. CONCLUSIONS: As screen time is an important indicator of time spent in a sedentary way, our findings call for more interventions to reduce the time that school-aged children spend in front of screens.

Department of Natural and Human Sciences Prevention and Health Promotion Heidelberg University of Education Heidelberg Germany

Faculty of Physical Culture Palacký University Olomouc Olomouc Czech Republic

References provided by Crossref.org

Associations of Adolescents' Excessive Electronic Device Use, Emotional Symptoms, Sleep Difficulty, and Communication with Parents: Two-wave Comparison in the Czech Republic

Time Spent on Daily Activities and Its Association with Life Satisfaction among Czech Adolescents from 1992 to 2019

Surveillance of physical activity and sedentary behaviour in czech children and adolescents: a scoping review of the literature from the past two decades

Time-trends and correlates of obesity in Czech adolescents in relation to family socioeconomic status over a 16-year study period (2002-2018)

Changing trends in adolescent alcohol use among Czech school-aged children from 1994 to 2014