The National Heart Foundation of Australia has launched a new campaign aimed at tackling overweight and obesity in children.
The campaign 'Unplug and Play' is all about getting parents to encourage children to substitute watching television for some form of physical activity.
According to the Heart Foundation 61% of Western Australian parents do not know how much physical activity their child needs to keep healthy and the campaign targets parents in order to raise their awareness of the urgent need for children to spend less time sitting in front of a screen and more time playing.
The new campaign stresses the important role of parents in reducing screen time for their children and instead encourage them to do at least an hour of physical activity each day.
Trevor Shilton, the foundation's Cardiovascular Health Director, says most children spend between two and four hours a day in front of the TV and research shows that it is driving up rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood cholesterol and a range of other problems, including social problems.
Research by the government's Physical Activity Taskforce found that on weekdays, primary school children, on average, spend more than two hours each day watching television and this time almost doubles by the time they reach high school.
On the weekends, primary and secondary students spend 17 to 20 hours on average using electronic entertainment such as playing electronic games, surfing the Internet or watching television.