Assessing health risks for schoolchildren and students caused by exposure to educational and entertaining information technologies

Information and communication technologies play a significant role in life of children, teenagers and young people as they are massively spread among these age groups. It is a new risk factor that can cause health disorders among oncoming generation. Our research objects were 465 senior schoolchildren living in Moscow and Moscow region and 598 students from Moscow and Arkhangelsk. Our research goal was to study influences exerted by information and communication technologies on health of senior schoolchildren and students; to do that, we applied risk assessment procedures, including hygienic, sociological, instrumental, and statistic techniques, as well as risk assessment itself. The obtained results revealed a negative trend and it was a growing number of young people with overweight and obesity. We determined how and to what extent various frequency of electronic devices being in use influenced deviations in physical development of senior schoolchildren and students (p