Is Television Harmful for Children?

Kids spend more time watching television every day than on any other single activity, aside from sleeping.

Time-use surveys have repeatedly shown that the average American child sits in front of a TV for anywhere from two to five hours per day, despite the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) recommendation that children under two years old shouldn’t be exposed to any television at all, and older ones should take in no more than two hours of quality programming.

Why the concern that television could be harmful for children? For the past 20 years, studies have linked excessive TV viewing to childhood obesity, poor brain development, lagging educational performance, sleep disturbances and diminished physical activity.

“The effects of television aren’t monolithic,” said Deborah Linebarger, assistant professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania. “Instead, effects arise as the result of the content to which children are exposed.”

Linebarger is the director of the Children’s Media Lab at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication, where she has studied extensively the impact of TV programming on infants and children.

Her research has confirmed that many parents are ignoring AAP’s no-television rule for younger children, since her most recent data found that babies between 8 and 23 months are exposed to 5.5 hours of background television per day.

And even if young children aren’t actively engaged with what’s happening on screen, television still promotes poorer language development and other executive functioning skills, Linebarger explained.

This doesn’t mean parents should toss out their TVs; they should just pay more attention to what toddlers are watching.

Television is Like Junk Food

“Think of their media use as you would the kinds of foods they eat,” Linebarger told Discovery News. “Help them develop good, ’nutritious‘ habits.”

On the other hand, educational content that facilitates interaction -- like when Mr. Rogers asks his audience a question -- and viewer-character direct eye contact foster learning.

“(Positive) effects span language development, early literacy skills, reading comprehension, math skills, history, social studies and foreign language,” Linebarger said.

If parents want to reap these scholastic benefits but are concerned about television’s links to childhood obesity, commercial-free programming could kill two birds with one stone.

“From a health perspective in particular, people who are exposed to the advertising of food eat more unhealthily, and that is a major cause of the recent increase in obesity,” said Frederick Zimmerman, an associate professor in health services at University of California at Los Angeles.

According to Zimmerman’s recent study on childhood obesity and commercial TV viewing, kids who indulged in more television formats that include junk food advertisements are more likely to have a higher body mass index, or BMI , whereas non-commercial content had no correlation to weight gain.

“The effect was especially pronounced among children under the age of 7, who are too young to understand the persuasive intent of advertising,” Zimmerman said.

No More than One Hour Per Day

The best-case scenario for young viewers, Zimmerman said, follows the AAP’s guidelines of eliminating television completely for children under two and limiting screen time to no more than an hour per day for toddlers.

Since parents control television limits, it’s up to them to set and enforce standards – and possibly tame their own tube time.

“Parents aren’t particularly motivated to change their own television-viewing habits,” said Kirsten Davison, an associate professor at the University at Albany who has studied the correlations between parent and child TV viewing.

Consequently, televisions may end up in children’s bedrooms, which Davison says is one of the worst mistakes parents can make in terms of health consequences. When that happens, TV tunes out solid sleep habits.“I would say never put the television in the child’s bedroom. If you don’t go there, you don’t have to worry about getting it out again,” Davison said.

In fact, Linebarger at University of Pennsylvania encourages parents to watch quality programming with their children as a way to reinforce language learning and communication skills.

“The whole experience of TV time can be reshaped in (children’s) minds as a learning opportunity, and these experiences will ultimately shape the kinds of media your child will want to use as they get older,” Linebarger said.

Photo: iStockphoto

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