Turning Off TV

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TV bad for kids, new study reports

Karina Bland
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 9, 2007 12:00 AM
Watching television every day for two or more hours when children are young can lead to behavioral problems and poor social skills later, says the latest in a series of studies bashing TV.

The study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore published in the October issue of the journal Pediatrics comes on the heels of another study that says popular DVDs such as Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby slow language development.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended no TV for children under 2 and no more than two hours a day for older children.
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The good news to come out of this is that the damage done by planting young kids in front of the tube can be repaired. Just turn off the TV, the most recent study urges, and if there's a set in a child's bedroom, yank it out.

Watching TV can literally change the way a child's brain develops, especially in the first few years of life, says Jill Stamm, psychologist and author of Bright From the Start and co-founder of New Directions Institute for Infant Brain Development in Phoenix.

With its short bursts of programming and commercials, TV trains infants' brains to scan and shift rather than pay attention for sustained periods of time. Once established, this pattern can inhibit learning ability later.

"What the brain gets wired for is quick hits of salient information. The brain gets used to that, and that's what it wants," Stamm says.

Reduce viewing or stop altogether and the damage can be repaired, Stamm says: "If you make changes, and particularly if you make them while the child is under 5, the brain rapidly adapts."

Stamm, a mom of two grown daughters and a grandmother, is not anti-TV. She likes her morning news shows and late-night talk shows, and figures parents should be given dispensation to pop in a video for 10 minutes while they shower. But avoid TV for babies for at least the first year, she says, and then limit its use and monitor programming.

In this latest study, researchers found that children who watched less TV as they got older had fewer behavior and social skills problems, according to Kamila Mistry, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the study.

Parents of 2,707 children nationwide were asked about children's viewing habits and behavior at ages 2 1/2 and 5 1/2. Among the findings:

• Children who had been sustained, heavy TV watchers from ages 2 1/2 to 5 1/2 had deficits in social skills and behavior, including problems with aggression and paying attention.

• Kids who didn't watch much TV as toddlers but by 5 1/2 were heavy viewers - two hours or more daily - had problems with social skills.

• Children who watched TV two or more hours a day at 2 1/2 but had reduced screen time by 5 1/2 had no significant social or behavioral problems.

Also, the parents surveyed reported that 41 percent of children had sets in their bedrooms, a factor linked to sleep problems. Often they watched TV before going to sleep.

Lori Schmidt of Tempe didn't let her two children watch TV until they were at least 3 and then it was only shows like PBS' Barney. The Tempe family still doesn't have cable. Between school and swimming, gymnastics and music lessons, the kids have little time to watch TV.

A former teacher, Schmidt says she could pick out which children in her class watched the most TV. They were the ones who couldn't sit still or pay attention for long. Their vocabularies were limited and their writing less descriptive.

An earlier study in Pediatrics in August proclaimed that educational videos designed to stimulate young minds, such as Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, may actually impede language development. Parents spent $2.5 billion in 2005 on such products for infants.

Makers say the videos are designed for parents and babies to watch together, with the adults clapping, pointing out colors and shapes and talking with their children. But researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute reported that for every hour infants ages 8 months to 16 months old spent watching such programs, they understood an average of six to eight fewer words than other infants who did not see them.

Both studies suggest television is a poor substitute for warm human social interaction when it comes to learning language. Babies love faces, stories, singing and talking, Stamm says.

Reach the reporter at karina. bland@arizonarepublic.com