New study has shown that children who spend over two hours staring at screen are more likely to have worse memory, language skills and attention span.

A research published by Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, involved children between eight and 11. The discovered that children with more amounts of recreational screen time of phones or video games had way more worse cognitive skills across various functions.

The research tracked daily habits of 4,500 US children who were asked to carry out detailed cognition tests. The results showed that over two hours a day of screen time were linked to worse processing speed, working memory, language skills, attention levels, executive function, reported The Telegraph.

The study, which was led by University of Ottawa, questioned numerous parents and children about their everyday habits such as time spent using smartphones and other devices, sleeping, and levels of physical activity.

Cognition skills were best among the one in 20 children who got between nine to 11 hours of sleep, less than two hours of recreational screen time, and minimum an hour’s daily exercise. These children performed 5% better in the tests than the average child. Children having screen time less than two hours a day also had 4% better performance than the average ones.

Lead researcher Jeremy Walsh said, “These are landmark findings. We’ve set a clear two hour benchmark here and it shows clear cognitive benefit is associated with keeping within that limit. I think parents should now be looking closely at screen time and this suggests it should be limited to two hours a day.”

The findings showed that US children spend an average of 3.6 hours a day engaged in recreational screen time. Limited screen time and improved sleep were related to the strongest links to enhanced cognition, while physical activity may be more significant for physical health.

The children were then asked to complete a cognition test assessing language abilities, attention levels, thinking skills, processing speed and working memory. 29% children met none of the guideline whereas, 41% met only one. 25% met two guidelines, while 5% met all of the three, as per Daily Mail.