Three studies recently released in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, an American Medical Association publication, support warnings by pediatricians that parents should limit television viewing, especially for very young children.
One study of 1,797 first graders found that children who watched more than two hours of television a day when they were toddlers had lower levels of performance on standardized tests in mathematics, reading recognition and reading comprehension than their peers who engaged in less television viewing as toddlers.
According to the authors of the study, Frederick J. Zimmerman, Ph.D., and Dimitri A. Christakis, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Washington, Seattle, “This analysis has shown a consistent pattern of negative association between television viewing before age three years and adverse cognitive outcomes at ages six and seven years.”
The authors of the study explain that these affects may occur because children younger than three years old who spend more time watching television spend less time in other activities, such as imaginative free play, interactions with adults and other activities that would be beneficial to their cognitive development. Another explanation offered by the researchers is that the content of the television shows that they watch may be detrimental to their cognitive development.
In the same study the researcher examined the affects of television viewing on slightly older children. This portion of the study suggests that television viewing at ages three to five years has a more beneficial effect, at least for the outcomes of reading recognition and short-term memory. The researchers found no beneficial effect on mathematics outcomes or reading comprehension. The researchers suggests that “because reading recognition and short-term memory are arguably the most basic of the cognitive outcomes studied, the implication would seem to be that the net effect of television viewing from a population perspective is limited in its beneficial impact.”
A second study found that third grade students with a television in their bedroom scored significantly lower on the mathematics, reading and language arts sections of the Stanford Achievement Test compared with their peers without bedroom televisions. The same study showed that those students with home computer access scored higher on all sections of the tests than those without computer access.
When bedroom televisions and home computer access were simultaneously considered, significant differences were observed for each standardized test. Consistently, those students with a bedroom television but not home computer access had, on average, the lowest scores and those with home computer access but no bedroom television had the highest scores.
The researchers acknowledged that it is possible that children with better test scores performed at their level because they watched less television; but other factors need to be considered. For example, children with bedroom televisions may have more trouble falling asleep and have decreased sleep duration. Such sleep disturbances, rather than viewing hours, might impact the students’ academic performance. Another explanation may lie in parenting styles. Parents who provided home computer access but forbid bedroom television may be more involved monitoring and promoting their children’s academic success.
The study was conducted by Dina L. G. Borzekowski, Ed. D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Thomas N. Robinson, M.D., MPH, of Stanford University. The study included 348 students with an average age of 8.5 years. The subjects were ethnically diverse and evenly divided between genders.
A third study, conducted in New Zealand by Robert J. Hancox, M.D., Barry J. Milne, MSc, and Richie Pulton, Ph.D. examined television viewing and long-term educational attainment of 1,000 individuals born in the early 1970s.
Information about the subjects’ television viewing habits was collected at ages five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, and fifteen. Information on the highest level of educational attainment was collected for 96% of the subjects at the age of 26.
The results of the study indicate that increased time spent watching television during childhood and adolescents were associated with a lower level of educational attainment by early adulthood. These effects were independent of intelligence, family socioeconomic status and childhood behavioral issues.
According to the researchers, the findings indicate that excessive television viewing is likely to have a negative impact on educational achievement and may have far-reaching consequences on an individual’s socioeconomic status and well-being in adult life.
The researchers contend that television viewing could be associated with poor educational achievement due to several variables. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the displacement of learning activities such as reading and homework.
The study did not find that television viewing had significantly different affects according to gender or socioeconomic status. However, there was some evidence that the greatest impact on attaining a college degree was with individuals of average intelligence. The researchers explained that this group was vulnerable because individuals with low IQs are unlikely to obtain a degree, while those with high IQs are likely to have higher academic achievement regardless of the amount of television they watched.
A companion editorial associated with studies stated concern that all three of the studies established correlations between academic performance and attainment and the amount time spent watching. However, the studies did not take into account the potential impact of various types of viewing, specifically educational as compared to entertainment viewing.
In the editorial, University of Pennsylvania researchers Ariel R. Chernin and Deborah L. Linebarger stated that research examining the short-term and long-term affects of exposure to educational television has consistently pointed to positive cognitive outcomes. The incorporation of well-produced, age-appropriate educational television into children’s lives, is therefore, encouraged. Chernin and Linebarger suggest that “such programming represents a valuable tool for stimulating children’s cognitive development.
October 2005