Parents who worry that their children have too much schoolwork and extracurricular sport to do can take heart for in this way, they prevent their children to being glued to television.

Research showed that 30 percent of the wealthiest Australian children spend more than half an hour a day doing their homeworks, studying and music lessons than their poorer peers at school.

They also spend 20 minutes more each day doing organized sport and 10 minutes more for eating.

The pay off for their parents is that they spend 42 minutes less on playing video games or watching TV.

Tim Olds, professor at the school of health sciences at the University of South Australia, analyzed the data gathered from the 2007 Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Survey of children nine to 16 years of age.

Professor Olds was most concerned with the gap between the amount of time in front of the television screens for the surveyed wealthiest and poorest students.

An extra 40 minutes is three hours a week which is equivalent to a year of full time work over the course of schooling. So it does, in some way, explain educational differences, he said.

It tells us that we should look at ways in which parents can help there kids away from the screen.

The 2007 Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity sSurvey discovered that boys spent an average of four hours a day playing video games or watching television, which is double of the recommended Australian health guidelines. Meanwhile, girls spent 3 ½ hours in front of a screen.

Ten percent of the boys had seven hours of watching time each day and an hour each playing video games.

Research from Kaiser Family Foundation in US showed that Australian children have less screen time than American kids.

Barbara Biggins, chief executive of the Australian Council on Children and the Media, said that children's television time was out of balance with what they need to be doing now.

Kids have to learn how to relate to real people. The hard route for parents is to limit their kids' screen time.