Too Much TV and Too Little Intelligence

Thomas Robinson, MD: With a TV in a child's bedroom, 'parents give up any control of how much and what their children watch.'

According to research by the American Academy of Pediatrics, if your children watch three to four hours of non-educational TV per day, they will have witnessed approximately 8,000 murders on TV by the time they leave school. Further studies by the academy show that TV affects how your children learn. High quality, non-violent children's shows can have a positive effect on learning.

Studies also show that preschool-aged children who watch educational TV programs do better on reading and math tests than children who do not watch those kinds of programs. So, when used carefully, TV can be a positive tool of a child's education.

Thomas Robinson, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, argued that "a TV in a child's bedroom has become the norm. From the parent's perspective, it keeps kids amused and out of trouble; but with the arrangement, parents give up any control of how much and what their children watch."

It is noticeable how many Hollywood parents now claim to be bringing up their children without TV. Hollywood icon Tom Cruise, a man revered throughout the world, has banned his children from watching TV or playing computer games so that they can learn the importance of work.

The Mission Impossible star has two children — Isabella, 13, and Connor, 11. Cruise told Evening Echo, an Irish newspaper, "The kids have no computer games, and absolutely no TV — none. They can listen to music and read just about any book they want, and they can choose the movies they want to see on the weekends, within reason. They also have chores, because I want them to know that it's important to work. I had a job when I was eight years old delivering newspapers."

Educative or Negative Impact

The question that now arises is whether TV affects child intelligence. The study "Association of TV Viewing During Childhood With Poor Educational Achievement" was published in a 2005 issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine and was the first to have followed a group of children into adulthood. Researchers scrutinized 1,037 people born in Dunedin, New Zealand. Every two years, between the ages of 5 and 15, they were asked how much TV they had watched. The researchers found that those who watched the most TV during those years had earned fewer qualifications by the time they were aged 26.

"We found that the more TV the child had watched, the more likely they were to leave school without any qualifications. Those who watched little TV had the best chance of going onto university and earning a degree," said Dr. Bob Hancox, deputy director of the Dunedin Research Unit in New Zealand.

"An interesting find was that although teenage viewings were strongly linked to leaving school without qualifications, it was earlier childhood viewing that had the greatest impact on university educational prospects. This suggests that excessive TV in younger children has a long-lasting adverse effect on educational performance," said Hancox.

"Other studies have conflicting findings on the association between education and TV viewing. While some have suggested that there may be adverse effects, other findings suggest that TV programs might improve learning. Few of these studies have been able to adjust for intelligence and social factors, and none have followed a group of children into adulthood," Hancox commented.

"These findings suggest that reduced TV viewing could improve the education of New Zealand's children. Parents, communities, and society should work together to reduce children's viewing hours. Programmers might give some thought to the low educational value of most children's programs," Hancox concluded.

Nurturing Violence

The Parents Television Council (PTC) set out to discover exactly what young children are seeing on programming specifically designed for them. The special report "TV Bloodbath: Violence on Prime Time Broadcast TV" chose to focus on entertainment programming on broadcast television and expanded basic cable for school-aged children 5-10 years old.

PTC focused its analysis on before-school, after-school, and Saturday morning programming. The analysis covered a three-week period during the summer of 2005 for a total of 443.5 hours of children's programming.

The results of the analysis were staggering. In the 443.5 hours of children's programming analyzed by the PTC, there were 3,488 instances of violence — an average of 7.86 violent incidents per hour.

Even when the innocent cartoon violence most of us grew up with (e.g., an anvil falling on Wile E. Coyote's head) was extracted, there were still 2,794 instances of violence for an average of 6.3 violent incidents per hour. To put this figure in perspective, consider that in 2002, the six major broadcast networks combined averaged only 4.71 instances of violence per hour of prime-time programming. Thus, there is more violence during children's programming than during adult programming on TV today.

Not Just Violence

 But it is not only violence that is present in today's programming for children. Sexual innuendo is also very much present alongside adult language, such as trash talking, bullying, and showing disrespect. In an analysis of children's television, the PTC also found the following results:

• 250 incidents of offensive language (such as excretory references or euphemisms for obscene language) with an average of 0.56 instances per hour.
• 595 incidents of disruptive, disrespectful, or otherwise problematic attitudes and behaviors for an average of 0.62 instances per hour.

A look at the individual networks turned up the following:

• The ABC Family Channel turned out to have a higher number of 318 instances of violence (only 11 of these were considered "cartoon" violence) for an average of 10.96 violent incidents per episode. The Disney Channel had the least violence with 0.95 incidences per episode.
• Warner Brothers had the highest level of offensive language, verbal abuse, sexual content, and offensive or excretory references.

University of Michigan psychologists Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann conducted studies in which they monitored the viewing habits of a group of children for several decades. They found that watching violence on television is the single factor most closely associated with aggressive behavior, more than poverty, race, or parental behavior.

In 1960, Eron embarked on a landmark longitudinal study of over 800 8-year olds. He found that children who watched many hours of violent television tended to be more aggressive in the playground and the classroom.

Eron and Huesmann checked back with these students 11 and 22 years later. They found that the aggressive 8-year-olds grew up to be even more aggressive at 19 and 30 years of age. They had problems with domestic violence and had many traffic tickets than their less aggressive counterparts who did not watch as much television. The researchers found that even children who were not aggressive at the age of 8 but who had watched substantial amounts of violent programming would be more aggressive by the time they reached 19 years of age than their peers who did not watch violent TV.

Unsupervised TV also creates the risk of promoting adult behaviors such as sex. On TV, sexual activity is shown as normal, fun, exciting, and an act that has no consequences. In commercials, sex is often used to sell products and services. Your children may copy what they see on TV to feel more grown up.

A number of organizations, including the Royal Australian College of Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatricians, have expressed concern about the impact of television and other media on children. Despite these concerns, children continue to be heavy consumers of TV.

Sources:

• Parent Guide for Don't Buy It!

Emdad Rahman is the IOL  reporter in the U.K.