The Average 8-Year-Old Child Has Spent A Year Of Their Life In Front Of A Screen

New research has shown that the average eight-year-old has already spent the equivalent of a year of their life looking at a screen.

Such is the pervasiveness of "screen time", the study from the Association of Play Industries has shown that the number of inactive children has risen by 50 per cent in a decade.

The key issue has largely been identified as the rise of screen-related technology, which has been touted as the chief cause for the decline in outside play.

This comes as childhood obesity also becomes a more prominent and serious issue as well, with almost 60,000 children in Queensland alone medically obese.

"We are now not only dealing with ‘basic’ childhood brain and body health issues, such as obesity, type-2 diabetes and ADHD, but fundamental core brain rewiring – what many of us are calling a new form of neuronal Darwinism," Nature Play Queensland's Hyano Moser told NewsCorp.

"We are seeing fundamental alterations in brain function affecting infants’, children’s and adolescents’ socio-emotional and cognitive development at its core."