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Doctors Recommend Against TV For Kids Under 2
An anonymous reader writes "The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a recommendation to parents that kids under the age of two should be limited in their time watching television and using computers. They say there's 'no such thing' as educational programming for kids that young, and that they benefit much more from real human interaction (PDF). Psychologist Georgene Troseth said, 'We know that some learning can take place from media, but it's a lot lower, and it takes a lot longer.' The article continues: 'Unlike school-age children, infants and toddlers "just have no idea what's going on" no matter how well done a video is, Dr. Troseth said. The new report strongly warns parents against putting a TV in a very young child's room and advises them to be mindful of how much their own use of media is distracting from playtime. In some surveys between 40 and 60 percent of households report having a TV on for much of the day — which distracts both children and adults, research suggests.'"
My 2 year old daughter loves ( L - O - V - E - S - !) the Fiest 1,2,3,4 Sesame Street video and has watched it since she was a little younger than 1. She dances and sings and it has never gotten old. In the beginning she was so enamoured with it, it was like watching those old movies of Beatles fans grasping their heads and shrieking with delight. She'd wave at the characters and definitely was interpretting it right from the start. It had less than 7 million hits a year ago, and at 14 million and counting, I am sure she is not the only fan.
Introducing music to kids is great and I'd add that its fun for me to do too.. I'd have to say that this is different than plugging her into a TV set to watch the eye-candy slackjawed n drooling and I noted the ADHD link with fast edit kids media recently It is a much more interactive thing where she picks her favourite videos to watch as a treat. We talk about the characters and animals and sometimes do drawings after. Another favorite is a Woody Guthrie classic and we sing it together sometimes. She digs the iPad since she can click on suggested videos at the end of one... OF course it is a supervise activity.
The AAP has always been extremely conservative when it comes to children and TV. No surprise about the new findings here. As always, you have to take these findings with a huge grain of salt. Apply common sense and your kids will be fine. I know that mine are even though they watched a boat-load of TV when they were still toddlers (what kid would not appreciate a bit of Sesame Street or The Wiggles?). Now they are in elementary school and way too busy to watch anything and they are a-okay with that.
Back in the day, parents would keep kids sequestered in playpens so that parents could get chores done easier. While TV is probably not the best answer, is there ever a good answer to distracting kids so you can do laundry, make food, take a shower or other necessary tasks?
This is just nonsense.
My son wouldn't talk till he was over 2 years old. We were starting to worry. Then he discovered Thomas the Tank Engine. Suddenly he wanted to say the names of the engines and he learnt his colours too. That led to shapes. At 3 he's now on to identifying numbers on the sides of the engines, he's got an incredible imagination. With no prompting he drew a passable clown face on his face when momentarily left alone with a texter (and showed how he'd close his eyes when he was warned that he could poke his eyes out). He's been to the circus exactly twice. I'll bet he got that from TV. He knows some letters because he's learnt H is for horn for example when we play Trainz with Thomas characters, or that you hit W to go forward. He has limited mouse and keyboard skills but his comprehension impresses me. He goes to preschool now so that's helping his social development. He is not allowed to sit there and do nothing but watch TV. My wife plays and draws and bakes cookies and everything else you would expect a young child do.
My daughter's developing speech sooner. She's not 18 months old yet but she's asking for certain objects with abbreviated words "bub" for bubble etc. She loves TV shows too. She usually prefers to watch with her brother and she's a very social little creature indeed.
Young children may not have the skills to understand at high level concepts, but they sure as hell can follow a kids TV show. And as long as it's not all they do, I think it's very important to their development.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Given she managed to open/turn pages in both magazines I think she understands them pretty well. The grabby hand movements don't seem strange, babies like feeling things. The only strange thing in the video is that the baby doesn't try to taste the magazine or the iPad.
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ADD is the logical consequence of doing everything ever faster. It is not caused by TV as such, but rather by the way the world has changed.
We used to have the middle ages, where everything significant done was thought over probaby 50 years at the very least. Then we went from "water + green sparkly stone heats up" to nuclear power plants (with a detour to the bomb) in about 15 years. Then things accelerated and technology advanced, so cost decreased to the point where 10 year planning was enough to travel to the moon. We went from 1 baud to ~150 Tb/sec with roughly the same amount of minds behind it, in about 40 years, rising exponentially year-over-year. Now things are accelerated to the point that we plan for a few hours, a few weeks, maybe a few months for the really, really big projects.
And "strangely" this results in a short attention span ... how is this a surprise ? How exactly do you think our brains would adapt ? It is physically impossible (in non-geological timespans) to get any smarter, so what was the brain to do ? The acceleration above happened in 500 years. The last 4 in less than 100 years. The last 2 in 30 years. ADD is only the beginning, it'll expand to the point that large amounts of people do not have sufficient attention span to get anything done at all, to the point where it can rightly be called a disease.
ADD is simply a result of how we've "chosen" to run the world (perhaps more accurately : how the dollar has chosen to run the world). It will get much worse than it is today. The shortening of attention spans and the lack of depth of thought is running along an exponential curve.
How then do you explain those who can deal with the pace of modern life, including those who love and work frequently with technology and information, yet retain the ability to concentrate and focus and pay attention at will?
I have an entirely different theory. It's not a matter of something new that has recently appeared. It's a matter of something old that is no longer valued as it once was. The heightened pace of modern life merely increases the contrast, makes the nature of the problem more evident and observable. Without that, you'd have to look for it much harder before you would see it.
It's simply a matter of discipline mixed with expectation and most people grossly sell themselves short on both counts. The lack of depth is absolutely caused by the decline of personal introspection and self-evaluation, things which naturally lead to an internal embracing of the good and rewarding kind of discipline. This isn't the kind of discipline externally imposed by some authority. It is a desire to appreciate and to invest in things that are valuable and significant.
If you buy a car, you take good care of it and learn a little bit about how it works so you know how to do that. If you buy a computer, you pay attention to experienced users, you learn from your mistakes, and you do a little reading here and there so you can get the most out of it. All of that has now been shoved into the exclusive domain of experts. All of that is "too hard", which is code for "requires a small investment of effort that repeatedly pays off forever afterwards".
All of that is not passive enough, not comfortable enough for those who want to be served more than they want to help themselves. That kind of creative, relaxing "me time" would also mean you don't judge your social standing by how hectic and burn-out your schedule is, you make time for things you value more than you say "I just don't have the time". In short, that would make you a nobody, because if you were really somebody, you'd be drowning in appointments instead of bothering with things like working on your character and learning new things.
The only real change has been to what you might call a value system. The pace at which a given value system is applied is completely irrelevant.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Sufficient genetic deviation in the population should allow such people to exist. If these people are successful breeders relative to the ADD folks, then, Darwins law of evolution shall explain the rest for you.
Darwinism doesn't apply when the penalty for stupidity (i.e. lack of fitness) is less than death or at least, sterilization.
Darwinism in that classic sense hasn't applied to human beings for a very long time because of technologically improved production capabilities, social safety nets, and modern medicine. Please don't offer explanations based on things you clearly don't understand.
It's particularly shallow to offer a genetic explanation in a one-size-fits-all manner in response to my post about nurture and voluntary decision-making.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein