The researchers found that the children watched from 0 to 16 hours a day, with an average of 2.2 hours at age 1 and 3.6 hours at age 3. Content of the television programming was not analyzed.
The study took into account several factors, including gestational age, prenatal substance use by the mother and socioeconomic status.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no TV before age 2 and that children over 2 be limited to one to two hours a day of educational material on TV or other screen media.
The recommendations appear far from reality.
Some 43 percent of children under 2 watch TV every day, and 26 percent have a TV in their bedrooms, according to a recent survey of parents by The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
In their earliest years, children's brains are undergoing rapid development, both with their brain cells and with how brain impulses are regulated by substances called neurotransmitters. Studies have shown that young laboratory rats given high levels of visual stimulation have abnormal patterns of brain cells. Scientists say increasing evidence shows that young children's brains are similarly vulnerable.
The rapidly changing images and sounds of television, even in educational children's programming, are certainly mesmerizing to young children but can be overstimulating, scientists say.
Television "is not like a piece of real life," said Christakis. "But it may develop as a child's reality ... a child who later learns that that is not the pace at which events unfold. Yet he is expected to be able to focus."
Christakis said his two children, 3 and 6, are limited to two hours of TV a week, all of it on weekends, always children's videos or PBS programs. They also may watch a movie on family movie night on the weekend.
Child-development experts both decry the effects of television itself and emphasize it takes away from time children need for other activities.
"The problem with watching TV is that kids are not passive learners; they learn by doing," said Lenore Rubin, a child psychologist for Public Health-Seattle & King County.
Rubin says TV also takes time away from nurturing relationships. Children who are well nurtured learn better and generally do better in life, she said.
"There are really better things to do than watch TV," she said. "What's better is to help cook ... or fold laundry or set the table or take a walk and look at the leaves."
Laura Taylor of Shoreline limits her 3-year-old daughter's television watching to one hour a day of children's programming and children's computer-game time to about two hours a week. The programming is almost always interactive, in which characters ask viewers to help them solve problems.
The idea, Taylor said, is for the TV and computer to be more than a baby-sitter. She is very selective to avoid the violence and sexuality of exaggerated body features found in some animated children's materials.
"Kids seem so much happier when they haven't been watching TV," Taylor said. "When they're playing dress up or games outside with other kids, or finding other ways to use their time."
Christakis hopes next to conduct a seven-year research project to see if children whose television watching is significantly reduced or eliminated have lower rates of attention problems. Parents, teachers and others will be asked to discourage TV watching, he said. |
