TV Found to Have Profound Impact on Kids' Development

The effect of  TV on children has been closely examined over the last few decades. Increasing evidence is mounting to show that TV can have very serious consequences to our children's physical health and mental development. Countless studies have shown that viewing violence on TV leads to violent behavior in children, and violent behavior when they grow to be adults. Other studies have shown increased sexual activity in teens who view sexual content on TV, as well as increased risky sexual behaviors. With all the attention given to the current obesity epidemic, TV has been blamed for part of that health consequence.

New Study Shows Drastic Effects on School Performance

For me, the most important study of TV consequences is one published by Jeffrey Johnson (Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, May 2007). This is an amazing study that followed 678 families in New York State for 33 years! The researchers tested the kids' IQ scores, and interviewed their parents to see if TV viewing was related to several outcomes, including school failure, attention deficit problems, and whether they went on to college.

The results are astounding! The kids were divided into 3 groups: (1) watching less than 1 hour per day, (2) 1-3 hours of TV per day, and (3) over 3 hours per day.

Compared to light TV watchers, the heavy TV watchers were twice as likely to have attention problems (29% vs 14%), 5 times more likely to have poor grades (18% vs 3.7%), 3 times more likely to fail or drop out of school (30% vs 10%), and twice as likely to fail to attend college or trade school (38% vs 17%). The heavy TV watchers were even 3 times more likely to report that they hated going to school (29% vs 10%). As expected, the heavy watchers were twice as likely to avoid doing any homework (27% vs 12%).

Did the TV watching make them fail in school, or were the lower achievers just more likely to watch more TV? That's where the IQ tests and psychological profiles come in. The kids that had low IQ, tended to fail school more often, but when you divide them into groups of heavy vs light TV watchers, you get the same numbers as the whole group (see above). Same for the high IQ group! The middle group (1-3 hours of TV per day) fell right in the middle, in all comparisons. Dr Johnson's study also measured baseline learning disabilities, parental education levels and parental socio-economic levels, and found no bias from these factors as well.

Other recent studies have looked at the type of programming watched. It seems that most children can benefit from watching 1 hour of educational TV per day, but more than 1 hour starts to go against them, leading to the problems stated above. Dr Johnson did not study a separate group of kids watching only educational TV, but he did find that kids watched educational TV only 10% of the time, and that percentage decreased with age.

What does the American Academy of Pediatrics have to say about this?

When all these studies started to reinforce each other over the last 10 years, the AAP came out with 3 strong recommendations about kids and TV viewing:

1. Children should not watch TV before age 2.

2. Children should not have a TV in their bedroom.

3. Children should watch no more than 2 hours of TV per day.

Unfortunately, 85% of parents are unaware of these guidelines, even though most pediatricians know them. I believe it is not a matter of doctors being lazy about telling their patients, but more a matter of not knowing how to reverse a very major social change. It's like getting kids to stop drinking "junk food" sugar beverages like juice and sports drinks. Getting the TV out of your child's bedroom requires much more than the physical effort of lifting a heavy object. It requires a social change to get kids to view their bedroom as a place for sleeping, dressing, and maybe homework and other projects. The other social change is to start regarding TV as an opportunity to learn, rather than mindless entertainment.

Now the good news: there is a great book called "The Elephant in the Living Room: Make TV Work for your Kids". This book can teach you how to set up new rules for watching TV that will maximize your children's TV experience without the the pitfalls that can be devastating to their minds and bodies. You can read an excerpt at:

www.maketvwork.com

Source: "Children and Television" (Contemporary Pediatrics, March 2007) by Christakis and Zimmerman, the authors of "The Elephant in the Living Room".