Children born very prematurely are at risk for cognitive and behavioral problems linked to excess screen time, a new study shows.

Research has linked excessive screen time to cognitive and behavioral problems in the general population of children, leading the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend that parents limit their children’s daily screen exposure to no more than two hours per day.

But the connection between screen time and cognitive or behavioral challenges had not been previously studied in very premature kids.

In the study in JAMA Pediatrics, more than two hours of daily screen time was correlated with lower IQ and a variety of behavioral issues in 6- and 7-year-old children who were born 12 to 16 weeks early, or around the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy.

These children may be especially vulnerable to detrimental effects of excess screen time because of the neurological risks due to premature births, researchers say.

The finding is part of an effort to understand how to help high-risk preemies thrive years after they’ve left the hospital.

“It’s clear that the environment of preemies’ lives after they leave the neonatal intensive care unit is so critically important,” says senior author and neonatologist Susan Hintz, who directs the Fetal and Pregnancy Health Program at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. “We need to move our work into a different zone and ask how can we support these children and families as they transition home, and then help them in the years to come.”

Read the full article about screen time by Erin Digitale at Futurity.