Experts warn of harm to kids from secondhand TV viewing

[The Straight Story]

Experts warn of harm to kids from secondhand TV viewing

You've heard of the hazards of secondhand smoke. Now here's another worry: secondhand TV.

A growing number of researchers are warning about the dangers of watching TV when very young children are nearby. Recent findings suggest that even casual exposure to TV can harm their development and undermine parent-child interactions.

The most recent warning came last week when the American Academy of Pediatrics for the first time included warnings about "secondhand television" in its guidelines for kids under age 2.

In addition to discouraging screen time for young kids, it warned against watching TV with them nearby, saying the practice hurts their language development. It pointed to several studies, including one from 2008 that found background TV reduced the length of time they played and caused their focus on play to stray. Recent surveys find that about one of three families leave the TV on most of the time.

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/story/2011-10-23/Experts-warn-of-harm-to-kids-from-secondhand-TV-viewing/50886060/1

[TwilightGardener]

1. Oh Christ.

[MADem]

3. My thought precisely. NT

[XemaSab]

2. Correlation is not causation

Families that watch TV all the time are probably less likely to have lots of books in the house, cook meals from scratch, engage in active discussion around the dinner table, and do dozens of other things that promote childhood development.

ETA: What TwilightGardener said. :D

[lbrtbell]

5. I respectfully disagree

All the smart kids I ever knew were from households that watched a lot of TV. I'm talking about kids who graduated as valedictorians.

TV isn't the problem, bad parenting is. If you don't interact with your kids, you can have a truckload of books in your house, and the kids still wouldn't learn anything. TV can definitely be used as an educational tool.

[redqueen]

6. +1

[XemaSab]

10. That's not my experience at all

I'm not opposed to TV. I watched massive amounts of crap on the TV growing up, but not in the evenings. Evenings were for cooking and reading.

Most of the really smart people I know watch almost no TV because virtually all of the stuff on TV is crap.

[lbrtbell]

4. Are you sure this wasn't in The Onion? - n/t

[Blue_In_AK]

7. Good grief, we've all grown up with TVs on,

even an old person like myself. My dad first got a TV in 1950 or thereabouts and no one worried about damage to my delicate little psyche. Nanny state, indeed.

[bluestateguy]

8. Please tell me grant money is not being used to fund studies like this

nt

[WolverineDG]

9. Oh, goody. The nanny-staters are going to LOVE this one nt

[NV Whino]

11. And for heaven's sake don't let them near vitamins.

Just in case :sarcasm:

[jwirr]

12. Well I do know after raising 3 generations of children that they can

pick up a lot more than we think. Can't count the number of times on of them has asked about something they saw on tv after it is long over. Don't actually think it harmed ours but maybe because they felt free to talk about it to us.

[babydollhead]

15. 3 generations of children! Thank YOU!!

[jwirr]

17. It was and is my pleasure. Thank you.

[woodsprite]

13. I used to find that if I was very quiet

I could sit between my grandmother's chair and the end of the couch without being noticed (after being told to go to bed). With any luck, I could sit there long enough to catch the end of the Red Skelton show ;) I never thought of that as 'second hand TV'.

[Gamow]

14. I thought this would be an onion article about transitive stupidity. nt

[lame54]

16. I thought you were talking about re-runs