Banishing Television

I’ve always been amazed by how so many parents get so defensive about their children’s television viewing habits. I’ve heard impassioned speeches of why watching "Sesame Street" is okay (“He learned his numbers!”), why "Animal Kingdom" is fine (“Last night was all about lions!”), and why "Dora the Explorer" is good (“She heard about why sharing is important!”).

Then there’s the parents who can’t imagine how anyone with a toddler or infant got anything done around the house without TV. “I had to take a shower,” or “I needed to cook dinner” have been frequent reasons for why said child is parked in front of the television.

Now research is catching up to what our grandmothers know instinctively: TV viewing should be a treat, not a daily occurrence. (And before you ask, yes, the TV in our house stays off for the entire day most days—even in the evening when the kids are in bed). Here are some highlights to get you thinking about your own TV viewing—and that of your children.

Early childhood viewing has been linked to later attention problems, including ADHD, while the American Academy of Pediatrics gets it right when it advises no TV viewing at all for kids under 2. Television often replaces reading. The University of Michigan Health reports that “Kids from families that have the TV on a lot spend less time reading and being read to, and are less likely to be able to read.”

TV viewing’s impact on school performance has long-term effects, such as increasing he chances of dropping out of school and declining chances of graduating from college. As one study put it, “All television shows, even educational non-commercial shows, replace physical activity in your child's life.”

A December 2012 Science Daily report found that the average American child between the ages of 8 and 18 sat in front of the television around 4.5 hours a day. Four and a half hours daily. “There was a stronger association between having a TV in the bedroom versus TV viewing time, with the adiposity and health outcomes,” wrote study co-author Dr. Amanda Staiano.

“A bedroom TV may create additional disruptions to healthy habits, above and beyond regular TV viewing. For instance, having a bedroom TV is related to lower amounts of sleep and lower prevalence of regular family meals, independent of total TV viewing time. Both short sleep duration and lack of regular family meals have been related to weight gain and obesity,” noted Dr. Staiano.

Another 2012 study reported in The Huffington Post found that children have exposure to background TV close to four hours daily, which expert say would likely hinder their development. “The sheer amount of exposure is startling,” said study author Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, an assistant professor with the Amsterdam School of Communication Research at the University of Amsterdam.

Even more troubling, children under the age of 2 had more exposure to background TV daily: five and a half hours. “Experimental studies have shown that background TV exposure has been linked to lower attention when kids are playing and weaker parent-child interactions,” said Piotrowski in The Huffington Post.

Dr. Michael Rich, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center on Media and Child Health, noted that background TV effects both parents and kids. “We do know that when parents have a TV on, the level of communication drops dramatically,” he said. “We can't just say, 'Oh, it's nothing. It's just background [TV].’ It's in our field, and it's designed to grab and keep re-grabbing [children’s] attention.”

What do these studies mean for parents? At the very least, I think we should all take a good, hard look at all TV viewing—educational, recreational and background—and curtail the amount of time our kids are exposed to television.

Until next time,

Sarah