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."

Comments

First sentence is a doozy.

[Guano_Jim]

Doctors and government health officials should set limits, as they do for alcohol on the amount of time children spend watching screens

I agree totally. Three-year-olds get really belligerent after a beer or two.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[Anonymous Coward]

try a light beer, I find my three year old actually prefers it.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[cybernanga]

Children under 13 should be banned from pubic schools.

Indeed!

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[Dishevel]

Seriously though.
Government should stay the fuck out of it.
Parents should raise their children. Maybe if we did not make it free to have kids by picking up the tab for them the less responsible people would have less of them.
If they want to have the TV babysit their kids they get the kids they raise.
Give it another 30 years and Government will just take the children after birth and raise them. Can not leave it to parents to raise their own children.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[notsoanonymouscoward]

In other news, guy with no qualifications makes unqualified statements...

But the issue is controversial and his opinions and standing are questioned by Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at Oxford University who says that although this is an important topic, Sigman's paper is not "an impartial expert review of evidence for effects on health and child development". "Aric Sigman does not appear to have any academic or clinical position, or to have done any original research on this topic," she said. "His comments about impact of screen time on brain development and empathy seem speculative in my opinion, and the arguments that he makes could equally well be used to conclude that children should not read books."

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Give him a break, he's a shitfaced 2 year old.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[Radtastic]

Seriously though. If they want to have the TV babysit their kids they get the kids they raise.

Unfortunately, rights surrounding the raising of children can't be as simple as you think they are.

Everyone else 'gets the kids that you raised' when you do an in adequate job in preparing them for life. Certainly, not in every case, but you can probably link higher incidents of poverty, crime, teen pregnancy, and maybe a dozen more undesired outcomes of which a person's course in life was directed fairly early on in life because of poor parenting.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[Belial6]

Sure, but the parenting that is recommended by the 'experts' is the bad parenting. Even the recommendation that children should have screen time is caused by the 'experts' making conclusions and then looking for evidence to support it. The reason that you see a correlation between poorly developed kids and large screen times isn't due to the screens. It is due to the child being exposed to an extremely limited set of information. You see this behavior across almost all demographics. The parents see that their kid likes a particular video and the parent puts the same program in over and over and over. It truly is a case of correlation instead of causation. It just so happens that TV is the witch that child development 'experts' obsess on hunting.

Having the government tell people the 'right' way to raise children is just throwing fuel on the fire.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[AK Marc]

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.

The problem with these proclamations is that there is no allowance for things in moderation. It's also easier to measure screen time than book time. And, the researchers are all humans, and we are biased to prefer the way we were raised or are raising our children.

If 22 hours a day in front of a TV is bad, and 0 hours a day in front of a TV is better, that in no way indicates the interpolation of 1 hour a day is worse than 0 or that 2 hours a day is worse than 1 and better than 3. It may be that there is some number in the middle that's best, and the edge cases are both bad, even if one is worse than the other.

Or, as others have hinted at but not stated overtly, perhaps it is that TV time negatively correlates with book time. Parents that give their children 8 hours a day of TV give less book time than those who ban children from TV until 18. And it's the book time that causes the measured outcomes, and if they figured out how to give 12 hours of book time and 8 hours of TV time a day, 8 hours a day would be irrelevant to their outcome.

But they aren't looking for a cause in a logical manner, but looking for things to get published and get funding for more study.

But for parenting, despite the people that whine about "you aren't their friend, you are their parent" you can more easily parent if you are their friend. I can get my 2 year old to do just about anything. He'll eat foods I ask him to, and he'll run when I say run, and stop when I say stop. And the best thing about reading to them is they learn to like reading, and that's the important thing.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[AK Marc]

And your raised how many children?

I find that to be false, useless and offensive. Before I had kids, I gave my sister advice on more than one occassion. She, like so many others gave the "you don't have children" response. Later, after I had a few of my own, she came back to me and asked if it was what I thought. "Of course it is" was my response. My advice, given as a childless 20-something was correct. It was correct when I was a 20-something with no children. It is correct when I am a 40-something parent. To dismiss good advice because you don't like the source seems absurd, but parents everywhere do it.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[PopeRatzo]

Government should stay the fuck out of it.
Parents should raise their children. Maybe if we did not make it free to have kids by picking up the tab for them the less responsible people would have less of them

When you say "less responsible", I assume you mean "poor".

But see, it's not just poor parents who turn out to be shitty parents, and society pays the bill either way.

It's possible that if parents were doing their job, we wouldn't need government to try to do something it wasn't designed to do and raise their kids for them.

To be fair to parents, though, when mom and dad both have to work full time it doesn't leave a lot of time and energy for parenting. My friends in Finland who have a couple of kids both are allowed to have extensive time off to take care of the kids without losing their jobs or income. They work for private industry, but that society puts a higher priority on raising kids, I guess. They also have a lot less violent crime (all kinds of crime, actually) and, strangely, greater social mobility than the US.

Over the past 30 years, the erosion of the middle class has also meant the erosion of all sorts of social metrics. And the one statistic that has the greatest correlation to all those declining social standards is increasing income disparity. Greater inequality, past a certain point (which we passed in the 1980s) causes just about every single measurement of a society's health.

The problem is not the government. The fact that the government is becoming the family of last resort is just a symptom. The problem is we've got an economic elite that has decided to shit on the social contract, reflected mainly in a corporate ownership class who no longer feels any connection or responsibility to society, because their "global" status has unmoored them from any particular society. They are above all that now, having broken away from any community save the community of the elite. And the rest of society is just eating each other, young ones first.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[Belial6]

Of course, that is one of those fake requests for citation. It is like telling someone that if they don't like how the cars are designed that they should start their own car company, or if they don't like how their ISP is run that they should start their own ISP. Technically possible but in practice producing so large of a cost that no one is going to do it to prove their point on an internet forum.

Even if I pulled a bunch of links to show my point, you would pull a bunch to counter it. You would come up with more because the 'experts' have their canon. It is an industry filled by a self selecting group that act as an echo chamber for supporting their canon. They do studies, and then jump to conclusions with no explanation for how they got their conclusions from their data.

I on the other hand do explain how I come to my conclusions based on their data. Which part is it you think isn't rational? The part where I say that kids who have their information limited get stunted? The part where I say that parents play the same program over and over? The part where I say that playing the same program over and over is limiting the child's exposure to new information? The part where I say that this crosses demographics? Really. Which part do you think is irrational?

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[wierd_w]

This is a fallacy. Let me help you.

(Cue cheesy 1950s documentary music.)

Mr. And Mrs. Smith live in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Mr. Smith has a decent job. Nothing special, Bob Smith just runs a computerized screw press. Mrs. Smith stays at home, watching and caring for their lovely 3 year old daughter Tiffany.

As little Tiffany grew up, she started primary school, leaving Mrs. Smith with a great deal of unused time on her hands, and a rising food bill for their growing daughter.

One day, Mrs. Smith approached Mr. Smith about the prospects of taking on a part time job. She'd still be home in time to see their daughter Tiffany come home from school, and to ensure that all the domestic chores were done, and the family would get a little spending money they could use to go on a family vacation some time. Afterall, that's what the Jones family had done.

Little did Mr and Mrs smith realize, but as the amount of consumer buying power of the median household increases, so too does the cost of various consumer products, due to the intrinsic nature of the lw of supply and demand.

Here we see a simple graph, depicting the willingness to spend, intersecting the willingness of a merchant to sell.

As you can clearly see, that as Mr and Mrs smith's financial fortunes improve, their willingness to spend extra on products they routinely buy increases. The natural market reaction to this event, is the inevitable adjusted price offered by merchants.

Now, Mr. And Mrs. Smith are both required to work. Mr. Smith still works as a screw machine operator, and Mrs. Smith still works part time at the local nursing home. But, now that they are both working, the market has naturally taken advantage of their increased buying power. Now instead of Mrs. Smith working just to help improve their quaity of life, she has to work just to make sure the two of them can pay their bills each month.

Seeing that the two of them are still struggling financially due to increased costs of living, Mr Smith suggests that Mrs. Smith switch to a full time occupation...

Now, dear viewers.. where do you suppose this will lead?

In just 5 years time, Mr and Mrs smith will both be working full time jobs to purchase the same products they have always purchased, and which they were previously purchasing on only a single breadwinning paycheck just 10 years earlier.

Working a second job, or sending a spouse to work only improves your financial situation in the short term, unless the practice is significantly undesirable that the pactice does not become mainstream.

Market forces directly mirror, and correlate with the statistical mean of consumer spending and buying power. The very wealthy occupy only a very tiny section of the population distribution; see?

As such, the very wealthy never truly experience the dramatic decline in their buying power as a result of a financial practice becoming a mainstream idea. Their contribution to the greater statistical game is miniscule, compared to the market forces at work in the median income bracket.

As a result of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, and their neighbors, the Jones family, the Applebaum family across town, who were previously just barely getting by on Mr. Applebaum's miniscule pay as a waiter at a roadside cafe, are now deeply stricken with povery, as the prices of common and vital consumer goods quickly exceeds their ability to purchase.

What is a "thriving economy" you ask?

A thriving economy is one where products are highly available, and merchants feel a modest degree of surety that they will continue to make profits and growth of their business investments. As such, a "thriving economy" is one in which Mr and Mrs Smith, representatives of the majority of the median income bracket, have their income presicely balanced by a highly lucrative and market accepted pricing structure.

The attempts of Mr and Mrs Smith to climb the ladder of affluence has instead only shifted the status quo, plunging other families into poverty,

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[PopeRatzo]

Of course the poor who are responsible people do tend to have 5 children they have a tough time paying for.
Rich or poor. If you have more children than you have time or money for you are a fucking idiot and should be shot.
Is that clear enough for you?
Having children you can not afford or do not have time for is child abuse. Having them jsut to have them makes you a fucking horrible human being that needs to die.

Last month, a drunk 16 year-old Lake Forest ($$$) teen killed a woman with her 2012 BMW.

She won't get any jail time.

This week, a 17 year old black kid, looking around and noticing the only active economy in his neighborhood, will be sentenced to 5 years for having 11 grams of cocaine. A 32 year-old investment banker will commit 15 counts of securities fraud, costing thousands of investors 20% of their life savings, and there will be no prosecution and no one will take notice. And on the rare occasion where there is a prosecution, he will pay a settlement, while admitting no wrongdoing, of about 2% of his profits from the fraud.

And you say that I'm the one who wants to "turn this into 99% vs 1%". Here's a news flash: It's always been about 1% vs 99%.

Re:First sentence is a doozy.

[fruitbane]

Not at all. Let me quote you here:

"Sure, but the parenting that is recommended by the 'experts' is the bad parenting. Even the recommendation that children should have screen time is caused by the 'experts' making conclusions and then looking for evidence to support it. The reason that you see a correlation between poorly developed kids and large screen times isn't due to the screens. It is due to the child being exposed to an extremely limited set of information."

You say that expert-recommended parenting is bad parenting, and you just leave that open, general statement to flap in the wind with nothing to hold it up. I certainly take issue with that assertion. Further, I think there's a dearth of evidence that these 'experts' you like to put in single quotes are simply looking for evidence to support their position. When doing research you do have to have a hypothesis, and that means testing a particular assertion. You have only the current research when doing evidence analysis. I certainly wouldn't want them trying to incorporate "common sense" into their results, because most analyses I've seen of "common sense" indicate that such stuff is usually anything but correct in most cases.

How do you know the cause of a correlation between poorly developed kids and screen time? Have you done research on the topic? That assertion requires evidence, not just gut feeling or common sense. It needs a citation or two to hold it up. It is a very specific claim and therefore needs some backing evidence.

About time, really.

[phrackwulf]

The real consequence of those "Baby Einstein" tapes now becomes clear. I also don't see television as something inherently bad for kids. But too much of anything is often poisonous. Television takes up time that could better be spent running around playing tag or staring at lego blocks thinking about making neat things, or playing with my little pony, in some of, um our cases. Hopefully this starts to re-inject some sanity into the mix.

Re:About time, really.

[peragrin]

I have had the chance to watch two different sets of parents raise two different sets of kids.(friends vs family)

One set watched TV had mcdonalds occasionally, played video games.

The other set all of the above was either banned or discouraged( TV watching was discouraged).

Neither group was really religious(you can count the number of times both groups went to church on one hand)

The kids with minimal TV, while not necessarily smarter are generally calmer, and listen better to their parents.

the interaction of parent and adult at the young age at this point seems to be the trick(the oldest child is 7)
As far as learning, the kids without TV are able to deal with complex puzzles(for their age at least) quite easily.

of course 4 kids 2 from each family is hardly noteworthy for standard deviation.

Re:About time, really.

[k6mfw]

when I was a young child, we had only one tv set. It was in the living room and only received about two stations I think. It was mainly tuned to boring shows, the kind that parents like to watch. So I had to spend my time building things i.e. Erector Sets, which later I began tinkering around with electrical stuff including making the mistake of cutting a lamp cord while it was still plugged in ("bang!"). Grew up to become an engineer.

Re:About time, really.

[fm6]

The real consequence of those "Baby Einstein" tapes now becomes clear.

Huh? Is that sarcasm? Or what? You seem to be assuming that there's some ironical fact that obvious to everybody, but it ain't obvious to me

I also don't see television as something inherently bad for kids.

Well, TFA gives several reasons why developmental psychologists think it is. Care to share why you think they're wrong, or is this just more obvious stuff everybody's supposed to know?

But too much of anything is often poisonous. Television takes up time that could better be spent running around playing tag or...

OK, I'm sure we can all agree that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. That doesn't change the act that very little of a bad thing is a bad thing.

Re:About time, really.

[Anonymous Coward]

another data point.
I remember as a child, all the old people in the room watching football games during thanksgiving.
They are all dead now.
The football games are still televised.

Re:About time, really.

[Belial6]

Your description betrays your bias. You listed TV, McDonalds, and Video Games. These combined with corporal punishment are the four horsemen of the child development apocalypse. You have been bombarded with the idea that these things are the root of all childhood ills so heavily, that you just assume that they are the reasons for children's problems.

My experience with kids listening across many dozens of families has lined up 100% with whether the parent is clear on their expectations, and consistent on making sure the child does what the parent tells them. I have seen plenty of kids that watch lots of TV, play plenty of video games and eat McDonalds regularly who are well behaved and generally calm. I have also seen plenty of kids that don't have a TV, don't play video games, and never eat fast food who are holy terrors. The behavior, good or bad has always lined up with the behavior of the parents.

With the ability to solve complex puzzles, I have seen the not surprising correlation with the complexity of the concepts and games they are exposed to. Whether playing video games, or not, the kids that were presented with complex puzzles got better at them. Those that were not presented with complex puzzles did not. We see the same thing with TV programming. Every show that a kid watches presents new information. When a child only sees one program looped over and over, they very quickly learn everything they are going to from that program. Once they have done that, they might as well be staring at a wall. Put a kid staring at wall for 8 hours a day for a few years, and you can bet that they will not be as good at solving complex puzzles as well as a kid that has spent that same amount of time solving a wide range of puzzles on their computer.

Mitt Romney was right

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to fire Big Bird.

PASS MORE LAWS

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't have enough laws pertaining to how we parent children. PASS MORE NOW PLEASE!

I want a government official to come to my home and verify how much TV my little girl watches every day. It's important that this happens because I'm a moron and can't control myself. I also assume you are even dumber and perhaps the best thing to do would be to just take all the children away and have the government deal with them. They could return them once they're all grown up.

Are You Kidding?

[flyneye]

C'mon, I took my first television set apart by 3. Sissies!
Keep them away from strong magnets, Tesla coils, acids and bases.
Some realistic adults should take control here, please.

I'm fine...

[Doctor_Jest]

I watched TV for years... mom would set me in front of the boob tube in my swing and I turned out jim dandy. The upside is I can remember tons and tons of commercial jingles, usually while sitting down ironically enough.

Seriously though, limits are important. Limits set by parents. The Nanny State is quite adamant about making sure they are involved in your private lives. Too many people simply surrender control to the almighty state. It's baffling.

Re:I'm fine...

[Longjmp]

I watched TV for years...

And now you ended up on slashdot, makes you think, doesn't it? ;-)

From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The study says that a lack of interaction is the root cause of the issue, and there is a pretty obvious rebuttal in TFA:

But the issue is controversial and his opinions and standing are questioned by Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at Oxford University who says that although this is an important topic, Sigman's paper is not "an impartial expert review of evidence for effects on health and child development". "Aric Sigman does not appear to have any academic or clinical position, or to have done any original research on this topic," she said. "His comments about impact of screen time on brain development and empathy seem speculative in my opinion, and the arguments that he makes could equally well be used to conclude that children should not read books."

TV Makes You Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

TV makes you stupid. I've been saying that for years. I'm one of those people that grew up without a TV. I don't typically share this information with people (I don't like being "that guy"), but it seems relevant...

As a child, it irked me that I didn't have any context for understanding the TV shows that all my friends were watching. As a teenager, I found it difficult to fit in, since I didn't have TV to insert fashion trends and pop cultural phenomena into my consciousness.

As an adult, however, I consider my parents' choice to not have a TV in the household to be one of the best child-rearing decisions they made. Why? Hard to say, but to sum it up, I'm smarter and more motivated than my peers. Instead of anesthetizing myself on the couch with the mindless tripe you find on TV, I read books and study topics that are of interest to me. I actively seek out information about what is going on in the world, rather than having news/opinions (it's hard to separate the two, if you get such information from TV) spoon-fed to me. It amazes me that people piss away their lives watching garbage that is, as far as I can tell, designed solely to make you consume while simultaneously making you unhappy with your life.

If you have a TV near you, turn it on for a second and count the number of seconds in between scene changes (where what you are watching switches to a different camera, angle, perspective, etc.). In a lot of the media consumed by kids/teens today, that interval is often 0-5 seconds. Reflect, for a moment, on what that might do to one's capacity for attention and focus.

There is a huge disconnect between what is portrayed on television and actual reality. Since kids today are socialized primarily by the media, this ought to be cause for at least some level of concern. Whenever I see people on TV (especially the talking heads), my first thought is always "People don't look like that".

And don't get me started on advertising.

my opinions on this matter, summed up: people ought to be more discriminating when it comes to what they are willing to expose their consciousness to.

Some TV is fine

[GreatDrok]

Don't park your kid in front of a TV all day, but a little TV has to be fine. We would go insane if we didn't have some down time while the TV provided entertainment. The main thing we do is stick to DVDs rather than live TV to limit exposure to all those adverts.

And Facebook causes cancer?

[slew]

Apparently, this guy (psychologist Dr. Aric Sigman) apparently has lots of agendas...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1149207/How-using-Facebook-raise-risk-cancer.html

Not saying that TV is good for you, but sometimes you have to look at the source of this stuff and wonder how seriously to take it...

Yeah Limits!

[U8MyData]

I think there should be limits on Doctors and government officials constantly drumming up studies on what is good for us. We know already and the vascillations of these studies is way more harmful to my mental health and well being than say TV ever would be. Get the hell out of my and others business.

Not science based

[Hatta]

This is one of the most artful academic smackdowns I've read:

But the issue is controversial and his opinions and standing are questioned by Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at Oxford University who says that although this is an important topic, Sigman's paper is not "an impartial expert review of evidence for effects on health and child development". "Aric Sigman does not appear to have any academic or clinical position, or to have done any original research on this topic," she said. "His comments about impact of screen time on brain development and empathy seem speculative in my opinion, and the arguments that he makes could equally well be used to conclude that children should not read books."

Read this as "Clinicians have no idea how to do meta-analysis. He's making this shit up".

TFA Doesn't Account for WHAT they watch?

[retroworks]

Just "TV is bad, m'kay?"

My wife and I let our twins watch only tapes, no broadcast TV, until they were about 5. Musicals and foreign films and animated movies (Fantasia, Jungle Book, etc). Oh, and only in French... we went to Montreal and bought all the videos in French only. Both kids are now fluent in French/English and speak Spanish as a third language, now studying Latin. The point being, the article says it's the amount of TV and the age of the kid and seems to assume all TV is the same... Fiddler On the Roof, Clockwork Orange, Japanese Anime, Sesame Street, Fox News, content makes no difference? That's like saying all food is the same, and it doesn't matter what you eat only how old you are when you eat it. Maybe the study covers it and the Guardian reporter just forgot to ask, as it is, it's a stupid article. But put a government regulation in without any control group study and you are asking for problems.

Re:gay niggers

[Alien Being]

Case in point. OP watched teletubbies.

N...rs are OK with me...

[gagol]

LOL, but getting back to topic in a serious manner... I do not have kids but...

I kicked TV out of my life about 10 years ago... and I could not be happier. I still download my top 3 shows and the occasionnal movie, but without the ads. It makes a world difference (no ads). I think the ads are the worst.

Respecfully, gagol, 12+ beers and counting...

re: ADS & T.V.

[MRe_nl]

ADS
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply youâ(TM)re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs".

- Banksy http://www.banksy.co.uk/

& T.V. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgOWTM5R2DA