Boston (SmartAboutHealth) - A new study has revealed that kids and even young adults who play too many video games and spend too much time in front of the TV have a harder time focusing in school and have a much shorter attention span than those who do not play as many video games.

The study was led by researcher Edward Swing from Iowa State University. The idea behind the study was to try and see what type of impact spending time behind a monitor such as a television monitor had on kids and young adults.

Researchers looked at two different age groups, with 210 college students, as well as a separate group of 1,300 kids in the 3rd, 4th, as well as 5th grades.

The observations were done over a period of just over a year for the younger group.

Too much time was considered to be anything over the AAP recommendation.

What researchers found was pretty astonishing to be quite honest. Kids and young adults who spent too much time playing video games or being in front of a TV were twice as likely to have attention problems.

The average time spent playing video games or watching TV for the younger age group was 4.26 hours, compared to 4.82 hours for the college kids.

The study has been published in the journal Pediatrics.