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TV, ADHD and Doing Useful Things
WebGangsta writes "USAToday (and others) are reporting that too much TV, at an early age, can cause ADHD in children. They say that there should be no TV watching for children under 2. Every added hour of watching TV increased a child's odds of having attention problems by about 10%. Kids watching about three hours a day were 30% more likely to have attention trouble than those viewing no TV. The researchers accounted for many factors beside television that might predict problems concentrating, but the TV-attention link remained. I imagine that in 10 years we'll be seeing studies about how too much Internet/computer/video game use will also result in ADHD. See PEDIATRICS magazine for more information."
However, I live with a 3rd grader that has been diagnosed with ADHD and has been taking a medication for it for two years now. If anything, the kid watches more TV now than before, simply because he can now sit still for longer. I wasn't there when he was a toddler, but his mom says that he hardly ever watched TV because he was too busy bouncing off the walls, going from one activity to the next.
they address this exact issue in the text of the paper: ... focused on television viewing at 1 and 3 years of age, well before the age at which most experts believe that ADHD symptoms are manifest.32,39 It is also possible that there are characteristics associated with parents who allow their children to watch excessive amounts of television that accounts for the relationship between television viewing and attentional problems.
Third, we cannot draw causal inferences from these associations. It could be that attentional problems lead to television viewing rather than vice versa. However, to mitigate this limitation, we
Same paragraph goes on to talk about how some shows might be good for children, such as Sesame Street, and promote reading, etc.
So, while the researchers can't claim that TV viewing causes ADHD, there is a very strong correlation between the two, and one that obviously deserves further study. Plopping a 1 year old down in front of a TV and having that entertain him for several hours every day just can't be all that good for him. There's just gotta be more constructively entertaining avenues available.
I think a computer could be as bad, if the child already is fidgeting from the TV. Between portal sites, google search results, and suprising animal porn, a kid would just get lost trying out all sorts of links, etc.
The great thing about a Commodore 64 is that the games are great for kids: sprite graphics, relatively simple premises, etc. I'd say the Atari 2600 fits in this category, too. Some of the modern PC games for kids are just as full of random detail as TV, which is also distracting (not all, some kids games are great).
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
Ever since our ancestors 10000 years ago stopped eating every fruit and seed they found, and started planting some of them in the ground and waiting half a year instead, life started getting more boring. The basis of civilization is the deferment of gratification.
Try looking up "panem et circenses". On the other hand, don't bother; it'll be too boring. How about this one: "Here we are now, entertain us". Interesting how you can go from Juvenal to Kurt Cobain, and see there is still nothing new under the sun.
For what it is worth, I have ADHD. I don't watch TV precisely because I get sucked in and suddenly I find it is three hours later and that's three hours I'm not getting back ever again. I don't need any further excuses for asocial behavior; I start out with enough of that without TV to boost it.
My son's 5th grade teacher actually assigned them "write a limerick about a planet". I'm not kidding.
Farming != civilization. In a city you can more choices and quicker. American civilization is certainly not agricultural. The flashing signs and lights of Times Square define our modern civilization.
Yes, our ancestors have been in a never ending struggle to entertain themselves. Are you saying it is wrong? Because now you are debating the purpose and reason of life, whether there is god or no god. Perhaps this domain contains the assumptions of which I originally spoke, and is the reason they go unquestioned - because they cannot be questioned by those who have already "bet their chips"
Your personal disdain and real or imagined effect of TV on the way you think life is _supposed_ (look above, again) to be is of no value in this discussion.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
I have ADD (not the H, note), and I can say that there are things you CAN focus on, and things you CAN'T.
Anything extremely interesting gets a big focus. I can play starcraft for like 6 hours non-stop, giving it my undivided attention. Reading a book for homework (when I was in school) was when my mind started 'changing channels.'
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I've never heard of civilization being defined in terms of agriculture. The definitions of civilization that I'm familiar with (and I took a lot of cultural geography classes, so I've got a good background for this) are concerned with urbanization. The tie-in, however, is pretty obvious in that agriculture is what makes cities trivially possible. (Other possibilities exist for the creation of cities, but agriculture is most common and is the easiest one)
Of course, defining civilization in terms of urbanization is really rather a western thing. In China civilization is defined in terms of written language (wen2 hua4 or wen2 ming2, where wen = writing or literacy).
Writing is what defines a people as civilized to the Chinese mind, not cities. Historically, almost every government bureaucrat was a passable poet, and all the most famous poets were goverment officials. That's no coincidence! But such a thing is virtually unheard of in the west.
Government IS the problem.
People should always remember: Correlation != Causality
/not/ teach them to concentrate.
While the article doesn't argue causality, its conclusions do support limiting kids' time in front of the TV (suggesting reversability), and every idiot journalist will take it that way.
It reminds me of a research article a few years ago showing that kids who didn't get breakfast didn't do well at school, so millions were spent enabling school cafeterias to serve breakfasts. When the results were in a few years later it became clear this had had little effect. The actual relationship was that parents who can't be bothered to feed their kids also don't make sure they study.
Similarly here, I suggest that parents who can't be arsed interacting with their kids will (a) dump them in front of the telly and (b) thereby
Hence just taking the TV away won't help much...
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Have you ever sat and watched a two-year-old play on website games designed for kids?
Check out noggin.com or nickjr.com, or even pbskids.org, and check out their games.
My two-year-old stays with one game for typically about 10 minutes. I'm still unsure if it's good or bad.
He doesn't run to turn on the TV in the morning- he runs to sit down at the computer. On the other hand, when he does watch TV, we make sure it's commercial-free stuff, and even a lot of the commercial-TV kids shows, like "Blue's Clues" on Nick are commercial-free and really don't switch around.
Typically the news story is sensational and thin on details- what kind of TV? My kid would beg us to let him watch Toy Story ( 1 and mostly 2 ) and Finding Nemo, and he'd watch the whole damn movie, is that a harbinger of a short attention span?? No kid plays with *anything* for two hours straight...
But good lord, the fight we get when we try to drag him away from the computer. That's the worst part. We make sure he gets outside so he can't spend all day in front of the various screens, but it's not easy.
Incidentally, he uses one of those "hard-to-use" one-button iMac mice...