TV Exposure Makes Children Crazy

November 4th, 2009

According to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a study of 3-year olds who watch a lot of TV may be much more aggressive than those that do not. Really? You mean violence shown to children has an affect on them? You don’t say.

“Early childhood aggression can be problematic for parents, teachers and childhood peers and sometimes is predictive of more serious behavior problems to come, such as juvenile delinquency, adulthood violence and criminal behavior,” according to background information in the article. Various predictive factors for childhood aggression have been studied. These include parents’ discipline style, neighborhood safety and media exposure. “After music, television is the medium children aged 0 to 3 years are exposed to the most.” Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media for children younger than age 2, studies have found consistent use of television in that age group.

So…some people like to use cardboard boxes as office furniture, while others like to use actual real office furniture. The guy with the cardboard boxes probably says his furniture is just as good as yours. Who are you gonna believe?

Are Teletubbies good, or bad? Do they make your kids “RAGE”?

“Current American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations mainly suggest limitations for direct child exposure to TV and other media; however, our findings suggest that additional household TV use may also be an important predictor of negative childhood outcomes, such as early childhood aggression,” the authors conclude. “Future research in this area should consider inclusion of both of these TV variables along with additional parent-child interaction assessments, observational assessments when possible, quality and/or content of TV programs and longitudinal analyses.”

Bottom Line: While studying children in a lab is obviously very good , everyone knows that if the parents are idiots the kids will probably be idiots. Some kids break the trend both god, and bad, but obviously these studies are of little to no value in my opinion.