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No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

nytimes.com

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Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#71

Post by ajross »

derekprior wrote: post #56
ajross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misreading the headline or misinterpreting your parents. When you were reading as a "two year old", they mean you were between your second and third birthday[1]. When the study says "No TV for infants under 2" they mean babies between birth and their second birthday. And the recommendation isn't about "bullshit" TV, it's about the fact that kids watching a screen aren't interacting with a human being and learn…

"it's about the fact that kids watching a screen aren't ... learning how to communiate (sic)" Does sign language count as communication? Because my son learns signs from occasional DVD watching and then applies them in the proper contexts - sometimes without any reinforcement from his parents or anyone else. Pretty sure that qualifies as learning how to communicate.

Clearly I'm no expert, nor do I know if studies have been done on the effect of TV watching on ASL acquisition.

I'll bet good money, however, that however many signs your more from signing with you instead of passively watching the device. Which, for verbal speech, is exactly what the studies show.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#72

Post by infinite8s »

Alex3917 wrote: post #64
0x12 wrote: post #53

No TV is so 1990. Really, today 'No TV' would be easy to achieve while still overdosing on Youtube, netflix and so on. Computers screens are more often than not the delivery vector for your daily dose of passive consumption. And it's not just the desktop machines either, it's the iPads and the phones that happily join in. Even not having a TV no longer means that you are immunized against this, and being without inte…

By TV they mean video content, it's still TV even if you're watching it on your computer.

There is a major difference between viewing TV content on your computer and TV content on your television - on your computer, you need to actively select new content once your current content is finished. Television has the property that once turned on, you are subjected to a constant stream of content (including advertisements) and thus it is much easier to turn your brain off.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#73

Post by Wilduck »

guygurari wrote: post #35
dadkins wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't invalidate the study at all. A correlation is still a very real statistical thing. It doesn't automatically imply causation, but it doesn't rule it out either. In fact, it's usually pretty good evidence in favor of causality. If this correlation shows up in enough studies without any alternative explanations, causality would become the prevailing theory. Dealing with human subjects and long term effects…

"A correlation is still a very real statistical thing. It doesn't automatically imply causation, but it doesn't rule it out either. In fact, it's usually pretty good evidence in favor of causality." If A and B are correlated, it might mean that A -> B, or that B -> A, or that there's a C that leads to both A and B. Without further data, there is no way to distinguish between these possibilities. And often the actual…

I have no idea why you're being down voted.

I see it as a very real possibility that there is a "C" leading to both increased TV consumption and developmental challenges, namely, poor parenting.

There are statistical tools that can be used to control for confounding variables, unfortunately they are not always used correctly. Often a study in psychology relies on methodology to control for confounding variables, using only a chi-squared test (or similar) as their statistical measure. In many of these cases, the data is screaming for the use of a marginally more complex statistical method. A simple linear regression attempting to control for omitted variable bias would be a great improvement in many cases.

When you're making a claim about causation, there is certainly more required than simply statistical evidence of correlation. Even if some of these studies did more work on controlling for omitted variable bias, you would never know it from reading this article and for that reason should take it with a grain of salt.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#74

Post by ajross »

guygurari wrote: post #35
dadkins wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't invalidate the study at all. A correlation is still a very real statistical thing. It doesn't automatically imply causation, but it doesn't rule it out either. In fact, it's usually pretty good evidence in favor of causality. If this correlation shows up in enough studies without any alternative explanations, causality would become the prevailing theory. Dealing with human subjects and long term effects…

"A correlation is still a very real statistical thing. It doesn't automatically imply causation, but it doesn't rule it out either. In fact, it's usually pretty good evidence in favor of causality." If A and B are correlated, it might mean that A -> B, or that B -> A, or that there's a C that leads to both A and B. Without further data, there is no way to distinguish between these possibilities. And often the actual…

You're overextending the logic here. Yes, that's a correct explanation of the difference between correlation and causation. But just because the B->A case matches logic doesn't mean that it works as a hypothesis. (In this case, I guess it would mean that children with speech delays are able to induce their parents to let them watch more TV -- that's absurd to the point of being nonsensical).

In fact, where there is a clear and sane hypothesis in play (e.g. "time spent watching TV is time not spent learning to talk") it almost always works out that further science shows the causation that you expect. That's true across fields, and it really shouldn't surprise anyone.

It's just that the experiments required to show that are harder. Simple demographic studies are a lot easier and cheaper. So you do those first, then work up the hard stuff when you know where to look.

Taking your point literally, it would never be useful to do demographics like this because you can't "prove" the causation. But of course that's ridiculous; these studies are immensely useful and improve all our lives.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#75

Post by ominous_prime »

maratd wrote: post #59
dolinsky wrote: post #51

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images includi…

> incorporated teaching him sign language from the time he was 4 months If you don't mind elaborating on this, why did you teach him sign language?

Children can usually learn to sign before they can learn to talk. My toddler had a vocabulary of about a dozen signs before he could say any useful words. It help relieve a lot of their frustration, and generally makes them happier when they can communicate.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#76

Post by Homunculiheaded »

maratd wrote: post #59
dolinsky wrote: post #51

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images includi…

> incorporated teaching him sign language from the time he was 4 months If you don't mind elaborating on this, why did you teach him sign language?

Having it so your baby can ask for milk long before they get upset or too hungry is great, having them tell you that they're finished eating is much better than having them just throw food on the ground ;) Babies are cognitively capable of communicating they just haven't developed the skills for speech yet.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#77

Post by OpenAmazing »

raganwald wrote: post #69
OpenAmazing wrote: post #18

My wife use to be a social worker. It is incredibly sad how many children are put in front of a TV all day. And not Sesame Street or even cartoons - but Soap Operas, Jerry Springer, Cops, Fox News etc. Picture a dirty trailer home, behind on rent, no job, fast food for every meal and a rented 52-inch rear-projection TV that is on all. the. time. When health care professionals make statements like this, the bad parent…

the good parents (like the ones that read HN) I greatly respect the people I’ve interacted with on HN, but I would stop far short of assuming that intelligence and competence in something like hacking automagically transfers over to an orthogonal skill like parenting. This is partly because of my own anecdotal experience raising children while working in software development, and partly because of what I’ve observed…

Slightly facetious with the HN == good parenting comment. But in general, if you are the type of person that likes to learn, problem solves and strives to improve, you'll do fine at parenting. "Approach parenting like a startup" isn't such bad advice. In general.

Dwelling type, of course, is immaterial. I was illustrating a group of people who have extremely poor judgement, children being only one of them (i.e. you shouldn't be renting a giant TV if you can't pay rent or provide for your children).

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#79

Post by nihilocrat »

dbbo wrote: post #66

I find it somewhat strange that video games are OK (it's on a screen but interactive) and I guess live theater is OK (it's passive but not on a screen), but the combination of passively watching something on a screen is not OK.

Video games allow the user to interact with the media and cause reactions to input. It allows us to explore causality at a very personal level, even though the systems and entities invovled are entirely virtual.

Live theater allows the user to control what to focus on during each scene. If there is a conversation, we can choose who the "camera" is pointing at. We are also looking at real human beings interacting with each other. The experience is mildly interactive.

Passive screen-based media gives us neither set of choices.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#80

Post by guygurari »

ajross wrote: post #74
guygurari wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A correlation is still a very real statistical thing. It doesn't automatically imply causation, but it doesn't rule it out either. In fact, it's usually pretty good evidence in favor of causality." If A and B are correlated, it might mean that A -> B, or that B -> A, or that there's a C that leads to both A and B. Without further data, there is no way to distinguish between these possibilities. And often the actual…

You're overextending the logic here. Yes, that's a correct explanation of the difference between correlation and causation. But just because the B->A case matches logic doesn't mean that it works as a hypothesis. (In this case, I guess it would mean that children with speech delays are able to induce their parents to let them watch more TV -- that's absurd to the point of being nonsensical). In fact, where there is a…

"In fact, where there is a clear and sane hypothesis in play (e.g. "time spent watching TV is time not spent learning to talk") it almost always works out that further science shows the causation that you expect."

There can be more than one clear and sane hypothesis, even if it doesn't occur to you immediately. For example, Wilduck below suggests poor parenting as an underlying cause for both these effects.

Here's another example. It is well-known that there is a correlation between the global temperature and the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (from looking at historical data). It is widely believed that higher CO2 levels lead to higher temperatures. On this basis governments have capped CO2 emissions, with real economic implications. This seems reasonable, doesn't it?

But some scientists who are working on this suggest an alternative explanation; here's the gist of it. There is a lot of CO2 trapped in ice, due to some historical reason that escapes me at the moment (it's not my field). As temperatures rise, ice melts and CO2 is released, leading to higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere. If this is the correct explanation, following your advice and putting caps on CO2 emissions certainly did not "improve all our lives".

"it almost always works out that further science shows the causation that you expect."

Evidence?

"Taking your point literally, it would never be useful to do demographics like this because you can't "prove" the causation. But of course that's ridiculous; these studies are immensely useful and improve all our lives."

Not at all. Sometimes correlation is enough. For example, if an insurance company finds a correlation between having red hair and being involved in more car accidents, they can use this information to their advantage.

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