According to a study, a good half of children between the ages of four and six (52 percent) spend more than half an hour a day during the weekdays in front of the television, a laptop or other digital devices.

At the weekend it is even 77 percent, according to the AOK family study presented in Berlin on Thursday.

According to experts, the daily media consumption of children in this age group should not exceed half an hour, as the health insurance company added.

“Excessive and incorrect media consumption can have a detrimental effect on children's health.

Especially if the movement suffers as a result,” warned Carola Reimann, Chairwoman of the AOK Federal Association.

If girls and boys consume content that is not age-appropriate unsupervised, this can also trigger fears in them.

According to the study, parents are no longer limiting their children's screen time as much as they were four years ago.

In 2018, 86 percent of parents stated that they set limits on media use for their children up to the age of 14, in 2022 it was only 76 percent.

For the AOK family study, 8,500 mothers and fathers of 4 to 14-year-old children were interviewed.

"We want to support parents in teaching their children as early as possible not to lose themselves in the digital world," said Reimann.

For this reason, media skills will become an integral part of the AOK prevention program "JolinchenKids - fit and healthy in the day-care center" from spring, which the health insurance fund offers nationwide in over 4,600 day-care centers.

“Our focus so far has been on nutrition, exercise and mental well-being.

However, we see huge health potential in the area of ​​media competence in particular and have therefore decided to add this component,” said the AOK board member.