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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

#91

Post by Alex3917 »

voidfiles wrote: post #89
Alex3917 wrote: post #46

Some statistics and information from the 2008 book Parenting, Inc.: "A nationally representative study from the 1990s found that only 17 percent of children under one were watching television and fewer than half of children between the ages of one and two watched. In a 2006 study of 1,009 parents, 40 percent of babies were watching TV or DVDs/videos by three months; the average baby started watching videos at six mon…

In school we studied research that correlated how many of hours of TV a day a person watched, and life expectancy. As many people thought the more tv you watched your life expectancy fell. When you first hear that it sounds like TV can reduce your years on earth. When they took a close look though they found a confounding variable; health care. Those who watched more TV tended to be poorer, and thus had less healthca…

"It's possible that the same thing is happening in this group of research as well."

In this case we already know that the most important mediating variables for predicting outcomes on the relevant measures are parent-child talk and self-directed play, so it's very easy to see how each hour of watching TV causes increasing damage. I'm sure some of the gap is because of mere correlation, but it's also clear that TV watching itself is a huge part of the problem if only because it prevents the child from getting the types of interactions they need for their brains to develop properly. (whether or not the TV itself fries their dopamine system or whatever directly is still an open question.)

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#92

Post by mathrawka »

> Even so-called educational videos do not benefit children under 2 because they are too young to be able to understand the images on the screen, the doctors’ group said.

So, we have been watching TV with my 20-month old daughter since she was around 9 months old. We watch kids shows and talk about it while we watch it together. And she knows exactly what is going on in the show and has for a long time. I'm sure she doesn't understand 100% of it, but it is obvious that she is picking up things.

* She knows the characters by name as soon as they are shown

* She talks about things she sees in the background

* Since last month she sometimes laughs when they do something that is meant to be funny

* She counts out loud to 10 with the characters on TV when they start counting

My feeling is that a constant TV in the background is a distraction for anyone, including babies. But having kids shows AND (here is the key part) watching them together and talking about it, re-enforcing the points of education, talking about the background, and asking questions about what is going on does in fact help with their development.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#93

Post by dbbo »

nihilocrat wrote: post #79
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…

How is looking at an image of live human beings "worse" than looking at live human beings (which is ultimately an image too)? If the child is given a remote control, does that count as interactivity since he can choose what to look at while exploring causality?

By the way, I'm not arguing that TV is good for kids. I'm just trying to analyze the argument in favor of preventing infants from watching passive screen media.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#94

Post by voidfiles »

Alex3917 wrote: post #91
voidfiles wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In school we studied research that correlated how many of hours of TV a day a person watched, and life expectancy. As many people thought the more tv you watched your life expectancy fell. When you first hear that it sounds like TV can reduce your years on earth. When they took a close look though they found a confounding variable; health care. Those who watched more TV tended to be poorer, and thus had less healthca…

"It's possible that the same thing is happening in this group of research as well." In this case we already know that the most important mediating variables for predicting outcomes on the relevant measures are parent-child talk and self-directed play, so it's very easy to see how each hour of watching TV causes increasing damage. I'm sure some of the gap is because of mere correlation, but it's also clear that TV wat…

I think that is a good argument. Isn't the main premise of your argument that parents should spend more time with their kids talking.

Like it seems as if TV is being specially berated when it could really be anything that takes time away from interacting with your child that is bad.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#95

Post by tlogan »

I can relate to this. My son was watching TV when he was 2 or so (stupid Baby Einstein - we were thinking we were doing a good things). But, then he started having problem with speaking. Went to speech therapists and things: but the thing which helped the most is: no more TV.

Apparently, at that age the biggest problem is that kids can't pick up language and speech by watching videos.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#96

Post by [deleted] »

mark242 wrote: post #10
rada wrote: post #7

My one and a half year old learned the alphabet by watching a cartoon several times. I think there is a healthy balance to be found somewhere between 24/7 and zero.

The point of the study isn't that kids can't learn from the TV-- of course they can-- but that they'll be _better_ at learning when it's you talking to them, or reading them a book, or playing, or something that's more interactive. We have a four year old who we've tried to limit watching TV, because you can see a noticeable difference in demeanor and attitude when the TV is on versus when playing by themselves or wi…

[deleted]

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#97

Post by zmmmmm »

While I don't necessarily disagree with the notion of minimizing television exposure this is starting to develop a smell of dogma.

The one thing we know about young kids is that in spite of our tendency to treat them like delicate petals they are actually incredibly robust and the idea that 30 minutes of well chosen television in a day can be so harmful that it outweighs the benefit of the tremendous relief it may give a parent to have this small amount of time to do other tasks - or god forbid, relax for a few minutes - seems crazy to me.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#98

Post by zmmmmm »

munin wrote: post #11
mark242 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the study isn't that kids can't learn from the TV-- of course they can-- but that they'll be _better_ at learning when it's you talking to them, or reading them a book, or playing, or something that's more interactive. We have a four year old who we've tried to limit watching TV, because you can see a noticeable difference in demeanor and attitude when the TV is on versus when playing by themselves or wi…

why does there have to be some TV time?

I don't know if you have kids, but looking after them (some kids more than others) can be an utterly exhausting task that starts at dawn and doesn't end until 8:00pm. Television turns out to be something that can occupy some of the most hyperactive kids with minimal supervision.

If you asked any worker "why does there have to be a lunch break" they'd look at you like you were insane. I think the same applies here.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#99

Post by [deleted] »

voidfiles wrote: post #94
Alex3917 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's possible that the same thing is happening in this group of research as well." In this case we already know that the most important mediating variables for predicting outcomes on the relevant measures are parent-child talk and self-directed play, so it's very easy to see how each hour of watching TV causes increasing damage. I'm sure some of the gap is because of mere correlation, but it's also clear that TV wat…

I think that is a good argument. Isn't the main premise of your argument that parents should spend more time with their kids talking. Like it seems as if TV is being specially berated when it could really be anything that takes time away from interacting with your child that is bad.

[deleted]

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#100

Post by 5hoom »

zmmmmm wrote: post #97

While I don't necessarily disagree with the notion of minimizing television exposure this is starting to develop a smell of dogma. The one thing we know about young kids is that in spite of our tendency to treat them like delicate petals they are actually incredibly robust and the idea that 30 minutes of well chosen television in a day can be so harmful that it outweighs the benefit of the tremendous relief it may gi…

And also, why just TV?

There are an awful lot of things in a modern house that are TV-like (big bright screen, moving images, sound) so is watching moving video on a computer or tablet screen better or worse than the same amount of TV?

Do the negative effects end the moment you can interact with what's on screen? How much do you have to interact with what's on screen, is there a threshold?

The way it's getting I could imagine people getting all cargo-cult with this thinking, eschewing their TV's & plonking their kids in front of the computer (to watch the same content) instead.

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