TV Viewing Linked to Attention Problems

oDDmON oUT writes "While your mother may have told you that sitting too close to the TV was bad for your eyes, the folks over at New Scientist are reporting that too much television may be linked to a bad attention span 'The study is not proof that TV viewing causes attention problems, Landhuis notes, because it may be that children prone to attention problems may be drawn to watching television. "However, our results show that the net effect of television seems to be adverse."'"

Comments

I wholeheartedly disagree

[CaptainPatent]

I am an avid TV watcher and have no problems pa...

Oh look a bunny!

Re:I wholeheartedly disagree

[Bluesman]

I'm sure you all think you're very funny, but this is a serious problem. You shouldn't joke about it, even if Lindsay Lohan just bought a new house in Beverly Hills.

Re:I wholeheartedly disagree

[skeeto]

How many kids with ADD does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Hey! Wanna go ride bikes?

No, really?

[SultanCemil]

Gosh, you mean watching Tv with 1/2 second shots changing quickly will shorten my attention span? What's next, water that gets you wet?

Re:No, really?

[anagama]

I'm with you, though I go for the convenience of netflix. I quite watching broadcast/cable TV in 1993. On the once every other year chance I watch a show at a friend's place, I'm constantly annoyed at the breaks in the story. Aside from years of training, I don't see how people can tolerate it.

What I prefer is to have a whole season on DVD -- the story becomes a video-novel that way. Even feature films start to feel like short stories when compared to the pleasure of a commercial free movie about 20+ hours long per season.

Re:Um.

[hatchet]

Maybe you should be sent to concentration camp... you know... to learn to concentrate.

Why is it

[BlowHole666]

I was wondering why it is that back in the 1950's you never heard about people having attention problems. I know doctors have learned a lot about attention problems since the 1950's but you can still tell based on grades, interest in social activities etc. We may have not had a name for it in the 50's but if it was around it would have been documented. But now it just seams that cases of ADD and ADHD are just popping up all over the place. Could it be that parents are no longer at home? The dad does not get the joys of working 9-5 and coming home to his wife and dinner like in leave it to beaver? So the kid spends a lot of time away from their parents because the parents are at work. So the child must think up new ways to entertain them self and it just spirals out of control and the brain tricks the child into always wanting to daydream? So naturally the child sits in front of the TV and that just spurs the imagination, but maybe the imagination should only be used so much before it is always on. So if you think of the your imagination as downloading an mp3, and getting caught as ADHD. If you download one song you will probably be ok. If you download songs 24/7 you will probably get caught.

Re:Why is it

[mark-t]

The reason it is more common now than it used to be is two fold: one, our society has improved mechanisms for detecting neurologically atypical activity due to improved social programs and medical technologies; and two, there actually _are_ more people in the world with these disorders than before. The reason for the latter is connected with how medical technology has advanced over the past century or so. Before, people with either mental or physical disabilities would not usually be able to be successful, and thus would not typically survive in a competitive world. These people would have relatively few offspring, and the genes associated with those disabilities would not be very common. Enter ever-more improved medicines, the ability to control or limit the effects of the disabilities, allowing people with the genes associated with them to reproduce as commonly as people with typical human gene structures. The result is that the gene pool contains an increasing amount of "flawed" genetic material, increasing the likelihood that a child would be born with some disorder or another.

Re:Why is it

[zifferent]

Negative karma be damned: You are a completely ignorant and a vain bigoted asshole to boot!

Go out. Get some books. Learn about a subject before spewing out your mouth about that which you don't know.

Since you obviously don't have a clue, it is very easy for me to say that you have no idea what goes on in other people's heads.

And you don't seem to grasp some of the basic concepts of science, observation and experimentation to say that psychologists just pull these pathologies out of thin air.

Most brain diseases have been studied extensively. If you bothered to learn you will be surprised to find that these are rigorous studies, with measurable results, that can be repeated. From studies of rare brain injuries in identical twins to mapping the brains with MRIs to cleverly designed tests and experiments that carefully discern bits of information, these all go together to paint a larger picture of the various abnormalities of the brain. These are real things which you can never grasp from behind your ignorance, yet you seemed to have developed a [ill informed] opinion about.

People are not wearing enough hats.

[Mr. Flibble]

CHAIRMAN: ...Which brings us once again to the urgent realization of just how much there is still left to own. Item six on the agenda: the meaning of life. Now, uh, Harry, you've had some thoughts on this.
HARRY:
        That's right. Yeah, I've had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and, uh, what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One: people are not wearing enough hats. Two: matter is energy. In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
        [pause]
BERT:
        What was that about hats, again?
HARRY:
        Oh, uh, people aren't wearing enough.
CHAIRMAN:
        Is this true?

EDMUND:
        Certainly. Hat sales have increased, but not pari passu, as our research initially--
BERT:
        But when you say 'enough', enough for what purpose?
GUNTHER:
        Can I just ask, with reference to your second point, when you say souls don't develop because people become distracted,...
        [rumble] ...has anyone noticed that building there before?

I have no idea what you are talking about

[everphilski]

so here is a bunny with a pancake on its head

Videogames

[king-manic]

Wouldn't video games be the obvious cure to TV induced ADD? Most video games require hours of dedication and concentration to finish. I suppose those with ADD will be more attracted to ADD games (almost anything on the wii right now). So in the interest of public health we should promote the playing videos games that aren't shitty mini game collections.

Save a mind, ban wario ware.

Re:Obligatory.

[TheWanderingHermit]

Yep. It's nowhere near new. I used data like this in a speech I had to do in public speaking around 1979 in high school. When I worked in Special Ed, many teachers had noticed that the kids who talked more about TV were the ones that tended to have less of an attention span. There's a lot of experience that leads one to believe that kids that watch too much TV tend to have an attention span that's about 10-15 minutes, or the length of time between commercials.

On the other hand, I've seen a huge number of kids who are supposedly ADD or ADHD show an amazing attention span when they sit down with a copy of Harry Potter. It makes me wonder if part of the problem with attention spans in school is due to inappropriate expectations for a child's age and boring teachers that just don't have the skills teachers did in years past.

I Call BS

[eno2001]

When I was a kid I watched a TON of television and I have an incredibly long attention span. I can sit and write code for hours. Or work on music for hours (piano, guitar, synths, audio workstation). I can have a long conversation on a particular subject (over dinner, in the car, etc...). My average viewing day at age three during the week was:

7:00AM-11:00AM (Cartoons, Little Rascals, Brady Bunch)
3:00-5:00PM (Rin-Tin-Tin, more Little Rascals, The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Looney Toons, etc...)
7:00PM-9:00PM (Anything my folks watched which could have been Star Trek, Hogan's Heroes, any number of 70s cop shows and of course the news occasionally in the 6:00-7:00PM time slot.

Weekends were usually:

7:00AM- 12:00PM (Cartoons)
1:00PM-5:00PM (Local hosted movies "Superhost" in Cleveland)
6:00PM-7:00PM (Star Trek)
8:00PM-11:00PM (Any number of "family shows" in the 70s, Love Boat and Fantasy Island on Saturday nights, and maybe a movie on Sunday nights)

It had no impact on my attention span.

Re:I Call BS

[mh1997]

I have an incredibly long attention span. I can sit and write code for hours.

Based on the timestamp of your post (2:27PM on a Wednesday) I would suggest that your boss may not agree with your ability to code for hours. Of course, looking at my timestamp black pots and kettles come to mind.

The ability to concentrate...

[Kjella]

...is a learned skill as well. Everyone that's worked in a cubicle or "open landscape", learn how to tune out most (if not all of it). Find a farmer or lumberjack and place him there and he'll go crazy with all the chattering until he learns. If you got zero attention span, the TV is also the easy way out, it's a constant series of impressions to keep you sitting there. You don't have to actually learn to sit down and get some attention span.

Then again, I rarely get to do that at work either. If I had a single checklist of things to do, and could work my way down then all would be well. Instead it's definately got multitasking, I'd say at times multithreading, preemption and there's always someone trying to hog the scheduler. I make it sound all bad but I don't really feel it that way - but it's definately not for the really long attention spans.

Presentation style could be to blame.

[ayjay29]

Coming up in this post...
Views on TV and attention span

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You really need an attention deficiency problem to watch most TV these days.

Coming up next...
More views on TV and attention span

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Previously in this post
Views on TV and attention span

I've tried watching stuff like Myth Busters that I downloaded, and it seems like it's not designed to be watched as a program, but rather byte sized pieces.

Coming up next...
Even more views on TV and attention span

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Previously in this post
Other views on TV and attention span

Compare that presentation style with that of the BBC, where the documentary is actually intended to fill an hour time slot with no ad breaks. In some circumstanced this kind of TV will help kids to focus on one subject for a longer period of time.

Coming up in the next post...
Another view on TV and attention span

Not the cause, but an indicator

[Shivetya]

Why?

Because parents who let their kids stay in front of a TV for hours on end are not teaching their kids responsibility. All they are teaching is selfishness and the like. I say this because I have seen ADD kids do just fine playing games for hours on, its because they want to do it. ADD is just an excuse for not teaching a child that there is a time and place for everything. Its because you don't take an active interest in what they are doing, as such they do not know what to place importance on. Don't claim they don't know how to focus , the do damn well when its what they want to do.

Occupy their time. Involve them. You would be amazed at the difference between children of parents who actively engage them throughout the day and those that don't. I bet you can tell which children are which. ADD should renamed ARD - Adult Responsibility Disorder.

Re:Not the cause, but an indicator

[Vancorps]

It's a shame you got modded as flamebait there but it is worth mentioning that those with actual ADD cannot play games for hours. The kids you are describing do not have it. A lot of parents pressure doctors for that diagnosis which has led to a disproportionate amount of people in this country taking medication for an illness they do not have because parents didn't teach them how to behave.

Of course a lot of parents just want to be friends with their kids these days too, that's part of the problem. There is a fine line between having your kid like you and being a friend that will do anything to make them happy.

Of course occupying their time would mean that you have to occupy more of your time to teach them which is also part of the issue. So many people working a lot of hours, that doesn't leave a lot of room to properly raise your kid. It's a hard line to draw between being poor raising kids responsibly or having some extra to be able to take everyone on a vacation every now and again. I see it with my sister who's taken the being poor approach. She's stressed out and often unhappy. Versus some other friends I have who have taken the other approach who are living stress free lifestyles taking their kids to Disneyland.

Parenting, it ain't easy, I'm glad I'm not a parent at this point but I have a lot of respect for people that are. Assuming they haven't abandoned their responsibility that is.

Re:Not the cause, but an indicator

[virgil_disgr4ce]

I wholeheartedly agree with you. However, I must point out: All stimulus on developing brains has a hugely fundamental influence on the way the neural networks of the brain wire themselves up. Children unexposed to language before 10-12 can't (truly) learn it ever, and babies who are restricted from moving around and exploring shapes and colors will be severely limited in their abilities to understand, conceptualize, and utilize shapes and colors in general. Evidence of this, as well as extremely compelling neural net models that explain it, have been piling up since the 80s.

It follows that a developing brain exposed to a significant amount of very rapidly changing images (and not even just images but dialog and things and entire scenes) will overdevelop the ability to deal with that speed, with the result that long, drawn out concentration could be almost impossible.

In any case, it's the most cogent biological evidence for the idea of moderation I've ever heard! It's obvious, and it's common sense, but moderation and a large variety of experience for a developing brain is utterly crucial. Just saying this to add to your point regarding parental influence.

jump cuts

[jollyreaper]

I don't have scientific proof or anything but I'm convinced that editing styles are proof of shrinking attention spans. You watch older shows and movies, you get lingering scenes, sometimes sticking with a camera for a minute or three before going to the next one. Now you can't even watch a live performance of anything without the camera operators trying to give you motion sickness. Ok, camera tracking overhead, cut to floor camera zooming in, cut to camera far in back to show the audience but make sure it's panning like they're trying to track a blue angels fly-by, puke! Slow the hell down, let me take it in.

Now some people might say that digital nonlinear editing makes it easier for people to go crazy with the cuts, the same way novice web designers go crazy with animated gifs and horrible fonts. (thank god blink is redacted.) But I'm thinking it's more about keeping short attention spans engaged.

Mod Parent Up

[mpapet]

Whoever modded this comment flamebait either isn't being very honest or isn't a parent.

While the comment drifts a bit, the basic idea is right on. The problem of short attention spans begins with parents letting the TV babysit their child.

Limited and structured television is fine. We use it to watch movies, travel shows and other stuff as a family, for a finite amount of time not to exceed the length of a movie or the television show. Why? Because there should be something to talk/laugh about afterwards. If it can't pass that simple test, it's time wasted.

Does my kid still ask to watch TV? Yes, she's a kid. But she's got other options including doing kid-parent stuff.

Step 1 to eliminating tv is getting rid of the giant screen whatever and getting a 17" or less and putting it in a cabinet that closes so it's not around.

Re:Obligatory.

[patrixmyth]

It has NOTHING to do with the skills of teachers. It's a problem with our expectations of what our educational system should provide, and a dearth of parental influence. Somewhere along the line, we decided that introducing Algebra and the history of Pre-Columbian Meso-American fishing cultures to third graders was a wonderful idea, and that we needed to test for every piece of trivia that any expert thought our 10th graders should know. Meanwhile, mommy and daddy both work until 6:30 pm, and barely have time to check if the kids have finished their 4 hours of homework per night.

When my son finishes high school, I want him to be self-sufficient. That means being capable of researching any topic, writing a concise summary of what he's found out and advocating his own opinion on the subject. That means balancing a checkbook and calculating how much wood he'll need to build fence. That means being able to reason his way through a natural disaster, and walk 5 miles to the nearest gas station when his car breaks down. That also means controlling his own emotions well enough to smile and wave at road-ragers. The rest, I am confident, he will get from my wife and I, and fill in for himself, based upon natural human curiosity and ambition.

Let's get the trivial pursuit tests out of our schools and give our kids the chance to take responsibility for their own future. America's aptly titled "greatest generation" grew up in the depression helping their families make ends meet, and their kids grew up on howdy-doody, and took us to the moon with slide rules. We're not going to get back to that by cramming more powerpoint presentations and multiple choice tests down our kids' throats. We're going to get back there by restoring single paycheck families and giving families the time to do something BESIDES watch TV for an hour before bedtime.