A Survey on the Relation between the Rate of Watching and Playing Computer Game and Weight Disorder Regarding first Grade Students in Elementary School in Karaj in 2012

Background: Life style changes have been considered in different ways in urban communities. Apartment housing, lack of physical activities, both parents being employed, entertainment devices relying on monitor display screens being within reach, leads our children to a sedentary life style. Obesity is just one of the side effects of this kind of living while children's confrontation with computer is decreasing to a lower age. There have been lots of surveys related to the duration of time spending on these entertainments with high school students but no research have been carried out on elementary school students in Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried on a sample of 450 male and female students attending the assessment center to register in the first grade in Karaj city. Results & conclusion: Therefore, in this survey, the average time new comers spent in front of a monitor screen was taken into account .The result showed that some part of child's daily activities was allocated to electronic devices having a monitor screen. Our findings showed that the allocated time for watching TV was 2.6 hours per day, for satellite programs: 0.49 hours per day, for Computer operating: 0.9 hours per day, Computer games: 0.38, and play station: 0.14hours per day and in total they used electronic devices 4.6 hour per day. Moreover, in this study, the BMI of each case has been calculated and the spread rate of weigh disorders was studied. About the weight disorders, we found that 15.8 % of students in this survey were low weight, 69.8 % were in normal ranges, 8.9 % were overweight and 5.4% were obese. In this survey, the relation between weight disorder and the rate of using electronic monitor screens was also studied. however, we couldn’t find any relevance between the two variables, probably the weight disorders must be affected by many other factors. We considered demographic variables as well as other variables which may affect weight disorder