Apparently a bunch of folks are going nutso because Sesame Street is now producing a line of videos targeted at kids 6 months to two years old. Critics, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, contend that babies shouldn’t watch any TV under the age of two. The reason? It may be harmful.
I had never heard of the “no TV under two” guideline. And frankly, when I started to write this post I didn’t take the critics concerns too seriously. I mean, TV has now been around for 50 years. That’s at least two generations of people watching TV; including many of us who grew up with a TV on in the house all the time even if we weren’t watching it. I think we would have noticed by now if anyone had developed serious side effects. But wanting to be thorough I googled quite a few articles about TV and kids/toddlers.
Then a funny thing happened. I started to freak out.
Even though in all the articles I read about TV’s potentially harmful effects the words “may,” “could” and “suggests” were used prominently, usually also followed by the phrase “more study needed”, they were freaking me out. Even though a lot of the data seemed full of holes and some of the study methods sounded questionable (I swear, one article “study” was based solely on phone surveys – yeah, that’s controlled research) I started doubting that the educational programming I let Chance watch (and that’s all he gets to watch) was harming him. Cookie Monster is the devil in disguise.
Then I had to reel myself in from my freak out.
I’m not saying that TV is the best thing in the world for kids. I think most of us agree that it’s not healthy to park our kids in front of the TV for hours on end or let them watch shows without supervision. I’m just saying I don’t think the argument “we don’t know what it’ll do” is a valid reason to shoot it all down either. (That’s an argument we hear a lot about a whole range of things in our society. I call it the argument of the quantifiable unknown – it’s easy to say “don’t take the risk” when you don’t know if there is a risk involved in the first place. Plus, this argument just doesn’t make sense to me, it’s OK to get in a car even though car accidents kill hundreds of people every year, but don’t let your kids watch TV because.)
The usual arguments are as follows: TV leads to short attention spans and/or ADD. TV leads to violent and aggressive behavior. TV means kids won’t read. TV leads to obesity.
The TV was on almost all the time while I was growing up. Ironically, I learned to read; proficiently and indulged in it in copious amounts, I might add. I have quite a good attention span, thank you. Any violent tendencies I am prone to I learned from other family members (purple nurple, anyone?). I am not obese either, though this is the ONE argument I can actually see happening with kids.
What we seem to be really good at in our culture is perpetuating and sustaining myths. For example, there is a common myth that city life is generally unhealthy whereas country life is much healthier. This is a left-over misconception from the first Industrial Revolution when city life really was a cesspool of ill health and disease. Today statistical data shows that people are actually much healthier in cities and urban areas because of better access to medical facilities. However, I think that if you talked to most people they will general say that the country air is healthy for you.
Another myth: MTV has caused a generation of us to have short attention spans. Really? This is why, of course, teenagers can play online networked games for hours on end with their friends (I’ve seem ‘em do it); why Hollywood keeps making three hour epic movies (which really is too long, not for the attention span but because my butt gets tired sitting all that time); and why Amazon has made so much money selling books to people who apparently don’t have the patience to read them. It’s all MTV’s fault.
And of course, the final myth: TV causes violence. It doesn’t have anything to do with certain inherent violent tendencies in human beings in general. It’s the TV. One of the articles about kids and television discussed a study where they showed babies video clips of actors portraying neutral, positive, or negative (i.e. violent or aggressive) act. The babies responded to the negative acts by being aggressive themselves. The babies did not respond to the positive or neutral acts. Now the article implied that this suggested proof that TV was bad for your kids. Not that violence/aggression in general seemed to be catchy, and that this tendency should be studied, but that TV was bad. However, Romans feeding people to lions, the Inquisition, slavery as an industry – those all occurred without benefit of TV’s influence. Of course, I’m not going to dispute that a kid left alone to watch violent or inappropriate shows might develop wrong behaviors or ideas about violence – but the jump in logic to blaming the medium instead of the lack of parental supervision blows my mind. (We don’t condemn all books as being bad, even if some of those are excessively violent too.)
I have the TV on almost all the time as background noise and I suspect many other parents do this as well. If I don’t have the TV on, the radio is on. When the TV is on during the day it’s almost always tuned to children’s educational programming. My son Chance does watch TV. Sporadically. If a song he likes is on. Or the Noggin promos with the business people (he loves those). There are only two or three programs he will watch all the way through. One of these is Play With Me Sesame (a whopping 20 minutes long), the other is Classical Baby (half hour shows). They are educational, non-violent, age-appropriate programs. These are two shows under fire in articles by the “experts”. One of the critics scoffed at the idea that babies could absorb culture from a TV show. (Which I thought was really funny considering how much classical music I learned from Bugs Bunny.)
To some extent I think we DO know (at a gut level) what TV will do. We all grew up with it. Sure, unbeknownst to us we might all be slightly brain damaged from TV, but if so I think we’re all damaged together. When I hear “experts” say TV viewing is not an “ideal environment” for developing children, I have to ask… compared to what? Compared to a hundred years ago when most kids dropped out of school by sixth grade to work? Compared to a hundred years before that when many people didn’t even read? This modern age is very recent compared to the long history of the human race. I’m not sure we know what “ideal” is.
Sometimes I worry that we’ve built a culture so dependent on “data” that we forget that we really haven’t been taking down that data for very long. We are still very early in studying many things, keeping statistical records, and our power of creating mythos from hearsay is far stronger than the data we’ve gathered so far. Perhaps the rise of TV coincidentally occurred at a time when records of violent crimes became more consistent and more accessible. Maybe TV leads to violence and maybe it doesn’t. Maybe we just hear about worldwide violence more through our modern news mediums, so we assume that we’ve become more violent. Maybe we’re also trying to kill the messenger just a little too much. Maybe we need another fifty years of data and perspective.
In conclusion, I think I have no conclusion. I find all the arguments, all the inconclusive studies, at turns irritating, worrisome, confusing, and exasperating. (I even started and stopped this post several times, as it alternated between funny, thoughtful, and a full-out rant.) It is one of my pet peeves of the modern era, I believe in the power of scientific study but I get irritated by the way people and the media will glom onto one facet of one study without looking at the big picture; without even realizing that it might be a while before we can even step back to see the big picture. Some of the articles out there would make us more fearful of watching TV than driving on the freeways. I think most of us know the TV is not a substitute for interaction with our kids. Neither should it be used as a babysitter. And yet it is a facet of every day life for many of us. One of the experts said (paraphrased) that babies watching TV was “risky” and was tantamount to running “an uncontrolled experiment” on your children.
But I kind of feel life is an uncontrolled experiment. I know for sure that life is risky; hundreds of years of history have statistically proven the data on that account.
For now I am going to continue to let Chance watch Play With Me Sesame. (I’m holding out for some real data before I feel too guilty.) How do you all feel? And what are you doing about TV and your kids? – the weirdgirl
More reading:
http://www.wndu.com/moms/042006/moms_49084.php
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7832264
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3341598/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4664749/
Q wakes up around 6:30 and the only way we can stay in bed (and heat our front room where her play stuff is) is let her watch tv for about 30-45 minutes.
If the sitter comes, we put on a movie so I can sneak out without a cry fest – and I’m sure the sitter has the tv on to like TLC or something.
She’ll ask to watch a movie now and then (never more than an hour).
SO, (god that was so boring), she gets about 2 hours a day TOPS. I still think it’s a lot – but she also loves to read books and do puzzles. I generally use it so I can get stuff done like dinner and I’ve decided to try to get past feeling guilty about it and just own it.
I know some people don’t let them watch – but she just watches okay stuff and it doesn’t rule her life.
Thanks for the links and good post. I’ve wanted to write something on this but just couldn’t formulate it well. This is great. I’m curious to see what people say.
PS She didn’t really start watching shows until she was about 18 months – before then, she was never interested so we never had the tv on.
PSS If the tv isn’t on, I put some music on for her.
I worried about this for a while. I even wrote about it when Ally was around a year old:
Rob and I have this fear of our kids being fat, lazy couch potatoes, like we are. So, we decided to try to limit Ally’s TV watching. Well, that’s not really accurate. We do have that fear, but mainly we’ve heard that TV is not good for kids under 2. No matter the reason, she doesn’t need to watch. The problem with that is that we like to watch TV. So, of course, she likes to sneak it in too. We did real well when she was younger. We hardly watched any shows. Plus, it was summer and it was rerun time. The few times we did turn on the Tv, she’d come over and lay her head down on your shoulder. You’d think “Aw… she’s so sweet” then realize she was just trying to get a better view.
Now that she’s a little older, she reacts to things she sees so much more, that I can’t stick to my resolve so much. Rob is better at it than I am, but he has moments of weakness too. My main weakness shows up in the morning. Disney channel has good shows on for her in the morning. The main reason that’s important to me is that she likes to wake up 5 minutes before I try to get in the shower and get ready for work. It’s a lot easier to get dressed and stuff if she’s otherwise occupied. Rob gives in when she’s cranky.
I changed my tune when she got a little older and actually started learning things. Dora taught her to count in spanish for example. I let her watch more, but try to limit what she watches, and how long.
**Hope this isn’t too long. Feel free to delete if you think so.
Before we had kids the TV was always on in the background but not any longer. i don’t know if it’s harmful to have it on, I just don’t want my son staring at the TV all day long. And he never watches actusl TV program. We always use a carefully selected DVD with appropriate content. He watches about 30 minutes in teh evening vorefore going to bed and a little bit in the morning during the weekends.
I think it’s great that he can sit still and enjoy a DVD but I don’t want him to sit parked in the sofa for hours. There are many otehr htings that are better for him than TV. It’s definitely easier for a parent to have the child watch hours of TV every day but I believe that’s a poor long term choice. I suspect there will plenty of time later for our son on the use the computer and watch TV.
AD
As with everything, moderation is key. My kids watch TV. I watch TV. But we also play, read, play outside, paint, draw, listen to music, make our own music, etc.
Great post!
Wow! Well said. You know, everyday on the news they are regurgitating some “study” that “eggs will kill you.” The next day, “eggs are good for you.” I tend to go with the old adage, “everything in moderation.” I am ALWAYS interacting with my kids, and you know what? My 5 year old watches TV and Disney movies and that kid can put a story together like no other. She learned it from watching movies AND from being read to. Any parent who uses the TV as a babysitter is asking for trouble, but a Mom who uses the TV so she can get a shower and then promptly returns to interact, who can blame her?
TV is a fact of life. Doctors and researchers who say that none is appropriate aren’t living in reality.
Hrm.
Well, first, I think the notion that TV CAUSES violence has some validity (is that even a word?). But I think it’s when parents don’t supervise what their children watch. It’s not very PC to say, but I totally believe that the ammount of violence on TV and the ammount of violent video games out there *contribute* to the higher and more extreme levels of violent acts committed by children.
Anyways…….
I also think it’s the kind of kid, and again, that just goes back to parents being attentive to whats going on with their kids. My daughter could be a total TV addict if I let her, my son not so much.
As my two sons (now ages 20 and 17) were growing up we wondered about all those unsubstantiated “studies” but we did not worry about that. We generally kept them away from the violent TV shows, but otherwise the TV was on a lot.
When they got to be teenagers it was often interesting to see what they chose to watch. On their own I would find them watching science and documentary shows on PBS. There was a period where they almost religiously watched the news everyday (OK, that could be a pro vs con issue).
Looking at how my sons live their lives the only things obviously corrupt in their lives I can probably easily attribute to parental influence (but I was sure that I had pointed out to them the importance of trash cans and dishwashers).
I have done countless hours of my own research on this topic – both as a college student working towards my teaching degree and as a parent. Here is what I found…the facts I am very sure of:
1)Having the TV on all the time has led us to become a generation that needs constant background noice. With the advent of suburbs and metropolises, noise is a constant thing. Is this necessarily bad? I don’t think so. It’s just different. As for our hearing, our ears haven’t caught up yet to this shift in environment, and many people in their 30s and 40s are having hearing loss issues.
2)There is a correlation between the number or hours watched and how overweight kids are. There is some sort of relationship, but we cannot empirically say one causes the other.
3)The number of violent acts on television has increased…and this has lead to a desensitization. It takes more gore and violence to really shock a kid these days. Scientists have actually monitored the brain and the skin…showing it takes a greater amount of violence to solicit a “stress response” from test subjects.
4)Desensitization has also lead to attention issues. Students need to be wowed and utterly entertained in order to pay attention…compared to even a generation ago. I remember being bored in high school, and kids these days seem to get bored easier. Video games bombards a young person with so much stimuli…and the brain then creates a new status quo of stimulation minimums.
5)Watching a great program like Sesame Street or Little Einsteins or whatever is not going to turn your child into a blubbering, fat, and hyperactive child. Like most things, it just can’t get too excessive.
Thank you for all your comments. It’s good to hear how other parents feel and are dealing with this issue. The media would have you believe that it’s very cut and dry, but it’s actually seems very muddied. I have to agree that I think moderation and supervision is key. (But I also think I’m feeling a little more guilty because we’re at the end of winter and I always watch more TV in winter.) I wonder how many parents out there have turned off the TV for good and if they’ve seen a difference in their kids?
And thank you Phoenix for bringing up some real data. The cynic in me has a hard time trusting popular media – it’s hard to tell the conjecture and opinion (the “sellable” story) from facts, and since they never actually cite real studies as sources it only makes it harder to trust. I’d feel more confortable if I read a story in an academic journal than Newsweek.
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This is definately something me and zygote daddy have been discussing a lot lately. I am a huge television watcher, but do not want it as a constant for my kid. I think my parents actually did a very good job monitoring what we watched and how much. I was not exsposed to heavy violence until high school and then it was still very little. I think there is something about the desenitation to violence since I am much less desenitised than most of my generation. I learned this the hard way in college by taking a course called the Aesthetics of Violence where we watched some pretty disturbing films. I was actually scared by this where most of my friends did not even flinch. I do not think violent images lead to violence however. my mom actually did her masters research on this. She showed one group ofkids upsetting or violent images and another peaceful images, her results showed no difference in the behavior of the children. The main reson I am concerned the attention span issues since ZD is ADD and there is a history of issues with this in his family so i am going to try to do whatever I can to minimise these risks, so I just plan to limit consumption and monitor it. As to the no TV thing, my cousins were raised without television (they are 10 and 13) and to be quite honest I think they are bit too sheltered. They do not even know about 9/11 because there mother does not want them to know. I also think there are some great kids shows out there that I like to waych myself, so I think a bit is not bad. Sorry if this is long, just my garbeled thoughts on the matter.
“Compared to a hundred years ago when most kids dropped out of school by sixth grade to work? Compared to a hundred years before that when many people didn’t even read? This modern age is very recent compared to the long history of the human race. I’m not sure we know what “ideal” is.”
The above is an excellent point that I don’t think a lot of people consider.