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Study: Kids Under 3 Should Be Banned From Watching TV
An anonymous reader sends this quote from The Guardian:
"Doctors and government health officials should set limits, as they do for alcohol, on the amount of time children spend watching screens – and under-threes should be kept away from the television altogether, according to a paper in an influential medical journal published on Tuesday. A review of the evidence in the Archives Of Disease in Childhood says children's obsession with TV, computers and screen games is causing developmental damage as well as long-term physical harm. Doctors at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which co-owns the journal with the British Medical Journal group, say they are concerned."
That's true, but I don't know to what degree I want to support it. I am all for using the social good on provable facts. I don't feel that anything in the soft sciences should ever be used as justification for anything, nor do I consider their data to be proof of anything except that they wasted their education on false science. In short I don't trust that these doctors know what is good for kids when it doesn't involve broken bones and viruses.
We supervise our children carefully, and honestly Nick Jr., Sesame Street and many of the iPhone games out there have been the best form of education that I think can be offered to the 2-4yo crowd. Their tolerance for parenting is as minimal as a kid of any other age, but they will watch tv and they will keep messing with that phone until it stops working. If you can make sure the TV is playing something reasonable educational, you trick them in to learning. I'm not saying it doesn't also go along with OTHER good parenting steps (like reading to your child every night, or sitting down with him and trying to play, or basic interaction, etc.), but there's nothing evil about the boob tube itself. It's abandoning your child to the tube, not monitoring what is on it (or expecting that TV will conform to anyones idea of a social norm and play appropriate content for your child all the time) and general neglect that is bad for kids.
I'm fairly certain TV and video games have taught my oldest child how to read, write and do basic arithmetic before he turned 4, because I don't think anything my wife or I have tried to do had anything to do with it. When we play with him, it's boring. When he sees it on a video game (often with bouncing furry creatures), it's awesome. Minecraft was probably better than legos in encouraging him to come up with creative solutions to problems.
The government can just stay the hell out of my home, if I want a doctor's opinion I will seek it.