This just in! New study shows little kids watch lots of TV!
Yeah, I know you’re “Shocked, shocked!” What may surprise you,
though, is the extent to which these children are being exposed to
television and why. Kids aren’t just gravitating to the tube; the
one-eyed monster is being used as a babysitter by parents who think
they’re too busy for them and by folks who see giving a child his
own tube as a way of allowing them to gorge on TV.
According to the latest Media Family report
conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation:
* While more children read or are read to than watch TV on a
typical day, the average time spent reading is 48 minutes per day
while the average time watching TV is 1 hour 19 minutes.
* A third of children between the ages of six months and six
years have a TV set in their bedrooms — and yes they do watch
considerably more than kids who don’t have one.
* Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that
children under two not watch any TV, more companies than ever are
targeting tender tots. Witness BabyFirst TV,
a new 24/7 TV channel.
* Poorer children are most under assault from the tube. Kids
from families earning less than $20,000 a year watch an average of
half an hour more TV per day.
This is so sad, because TV makes kids fatter and dumber.
TV has been recognized as a serious contributor to childhood
obesity at least since William Dietz and Steven Gortmaker asked the
question in a landmark 1985 article: “Do We Fatten Our Children at the
Television Set?” Countless subsequent surveys have found a cause-and-effect
relationship between more TV and more body fat. In 1993 Gortmaker
and Dietz “estimated almost a third of childhood obesity
could be erased if TV viewing were reduced to an hour or less a
week.”
A study published in January in the
International Journal of Obesity by New Zealand
researchers found that the amount of TV children watch is more
connected to being overweight than either nutritional intake or
physical activity.
So all TV and no play makes Jack a fat boy. What about the
“dumber” aspect?
Some of those kids are watching Sesame Street and other
educational shows. But in the ratings game, Big Bird is getting the
rotisserie treatment from SpongeBob SquarePants. Only a
fourth of parents surveyed even claimed their children
watched mostly educational shows.
A University of Washington, Seattle study published last year compared the amounts
of TV watched before the age of three with performance on three
nationally recognized reading tests at ages six and seven. It found
that “each hour of average daily television viewing before age 3
years was associated with deleterious effects.”
A separate evaluation from the aforementioned New
Zealand researchers found early TV exposure even affected
26-year-olds, concluding: “Excessive television viewing in
childhood may have long-lasting adverse consequences for
educational achievement and subsequent socioeconomic status and
well-being.”
That means television is helping to keep those on the bottom of
the socio-economic ladder right there on the bottom.
Yet of those parents in the Kaiser poll who answered that TV
mostly helps or hurts their children’s learning, most had deluded
themselves into believing it helped. Some might actually be as busy
as they claim, but one of the main reasons adult Americans seem
time-pressed these days is that they’re spending so much time
themselves watching the tube. About 60 percent of American adults
watch two or more hours of TV daily — and yes,
it makes them fatter too.
It’s the ultimate cop-out for parents to give kids their own
tube just so they can be lounge lizards.
For those parents truly overwhelmed with work, there is a nice
compromise. It’s called educational videotapes and DVDs. Since
these can be readily obtained from the public library and in any
case studies show kids love repetition, this is far more reasonable than
might otherwise seem.
But please, never forget that there never will be any substitute
for your children that’s better than you.
