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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

#101

Post by spot »

grandalf wrote: post #90
frossie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This anti-TV meme is mostly luddite fearmongering intended to get joe and jane sixpack to stop vegging out in front of the TV and start being engaged as parents. That is not what the Academy of Pediatrics is actually saying. They specifically say that you as the parent is not required to engage with your child the whole time - however if you are NOT engaged with them, you are still better having the TV off, because c…

But couldn't some programming be beneficial and some harmful? It just seems like quite an oversimplification to say that all TV is neutral or harmful to development. My kid is 15 months and we occasionally play "signing time" sign language training DVDs. She's learned a lot of spoken vocabulary from it, and appears to be in the 99th percentile for language development. She doesn't typically sign anything (except for…

ok you have your anecdote, they have their big study. i know where my bets are.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#102

Post by Alex3917 »

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.

It's not just that you're not interacting with them, it's that it's preventing them from engaging in self-directed play, which is necessary for developing executive function among other things.

The reason TV is being singled out specifically is because it's basically causing permanent brain damage in 90+% of kids. Sure, there are other ways of fucking up your kids as well, but in terms of what people are actually doing TV is at or near the top of the list.

All these people who think it's ok to let their kids watch 'just an hour' of TV per day are probably why ADHD now effects over 9% of kids.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#104

Post by grandalf »

spot wrote: post #101
grandalf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But couldn't some programming be beneficial and some harmful? It just seems like quite an oversimplification to say that all TV is neutral or harmful to development. My kid is 15 months and we occasionally play "signing time" sign language training DVDs. She's learned a lot of spoken vocabulary from it, and appears to be in the 99th percentile for language development. She doesn't typically sign anything (except for…

ok you have your anecdote, they have their big study. i know where my bets are.

Hah not trying to argue for anything based on the anecdote, just using it to suggest that the premises of the study might not be all that realistic. It's easy to get caught up in the result of an official sounding study which may actually be ill-conceived.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#105

Post by mhartl » 

  “As always, the children who are most at risk are exactly 
  the very many children in our society who have the fewest
  resources,” Alison Gopnik, a psychologist at the
  University of California, said in an e-mail.
Indeed. And such "at-risk" children often inherit genes predisposing them to exactly the kinds of issues the studies uncover (and blame on watching too much TV). The problem is that most of these studies don't control for genes; there's no way to tell if TV-watching is the source of the problems or if it's the genes of the parents who let their babies watch lots of TV. Until the studies are re-done while controlling for genes, the conclusions (and the corresponding recommendations) are useless.

Parents who read a lot to their children have children who grow up to be more verbal. But parents who read a lot to their children also tend to pass on genes for verbal fluency. Studies that adequately control for genes show that reading to children does virtually nothing for their verbal ability—it's all in the genes, and in random events over which the parents have no control. See http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_b... and http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/01... for more.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#106

Post by hugh3 »

brudgers wrote: post #43
pwenzel wrote: post #25

My wife and I chose to adopt a "no screen time" policy for our child, who is presently 7 months old. Here are my observations so far: 1. At a restaurant with TVs, we've observed our child go from laughing and socially engaged, to completed zoned out and unaware of people in mere seconds, just because the television appeared in his field of view. :-( 2. At less than three months of age, he had a fit when pulled away f…

> "Finally, most advertising is obnoxious and has no place in my home. Why expose our infant to it? He'll have the rest of his life to be accosted by ads." Advertising for products used by children has changed dramatically over the past few decades. Juliet Schor's book Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture documents the change and the strategies used. It is one of the most influential boo…

Can you summarise the interesting points rather than sending us all off to read a whole book to find out how advertising has changed over the past few decades?

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#107

Post by burgerbrain »

dbbo wrote: post #93
nihilocrat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 medi…

If you try going to see some live theatre in person, I think you'll understand the difference between it and television.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#108

Post by jellicle »

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…

But you're not grasping the point. Correlation is not causation. If parents are poor, work three jobs ("fantastic!", says George Bush), and don't have time to tutor their kids, their kids may watch more TV and may have lower test scores..... but there's absolutely no proof anywhere that TV "causes damage". None. Zero. Nil.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#109

Post by watmough »

watmough wrote: post #47
MartinCron wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal evidence. I listened to NPR a lot with my first child, and other than a faint liberal bias, he has turned out just fine.

I'm acting to limit my daughter's exposure to TV, and this is a topic I'd like to make a more substantial post on, but until that happy moment, I'd just like to note that: "The real World often has a slight liberal bias..." edit: just sneaking a few minutes on HN while she watches Nihongo Quick Lesson on NHK (via Roku). Only a few shows actually really engage her, but this is one of them... She shouts and dances with…

It'd be really interesting to know who would mod this post down, and why?

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#110

Post by ryanwaggoner »

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…

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.

That is absolutely appalling. Rear-projection? It's 2011, get an LCD already!

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