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By Mom Unplugged, February 13, 2008 3:44 pm

CJ of Resources 4 Home-Education (a great blog by the way with lots of links to educational resources!) left me a comment today with a very interesting link. The link is to a Reuters article entitled: Psychologist Warns of Educational Television Myth. Thank you CJ!

Psychologist Dr. Aric Sigman, author of Remotely Controlled: How Television is Damaging Our Lives is waging a battle against so-called educational television for children, what he calls “recreational junk food.” According to Dr. Sigman, the brains of young children who are exposed to screen time (be it TV, computers or DVD/video) are physically developing in a less healthy way despite any actual learning that might occur as a result of this screen exposure.

He says: “There is a definite inverse relationship between time spent watching any kind of television or screen when you are young and your ability to read and concentrate when you are older.”

He believes that the sensory complexity of TV, video and computer games (rapidly changing images, colors, noises, etc.) is having a detrimental effect on the wiring of the child’s brain and is producing children with shorter attention spans. This claim is backed up by a study that I wrote about here: Children’s Behavioral Problems Linked to TV.

Dr. Sigman also says:

Studies of brain activity have shown that a child doing simple mental arithmetic with coloured counters or beans has greater blood flow to the brain than one engaged what may look like a far more complex computer game… It may well be that your child learns from the TV that a certain country is in Africa, but that may well also come at the cost of doing something to their attention span…(w)hereas if a parent is talking to their children about geography or nature, they can learn without that risk and will physically exercise their brains in the process.

Do Dr. Sigman’s kids watch TV? “My children have candy sometimes, and television is just like candy, it’s recreational junk food…(b)ut it’s a complete myth that children somehow inherently need TV — otherwise they would be born with a television built into their stomachs, just like the Tellytubbies”.

Yet again, the old adage “all things in moderation” seems to be good advice!

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By Mom Unplugged, October 9, 2007 8:55 pm

There is a new study out which finds that children who watch TV for two or more hours per day from a young age (2.5 years-old), are more prone to behavioral problems and poor social skills when they are older (5.5 years-old).
The study was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and was published in the October issue of the journal Pediatrics. It is based on a nationwide survey of the parents of 2,707 children.

Here are some of the findings:

-Children who had been sustained, heavy (two or more hours of TV a day) TV watchers from ages 2.5 to 5.5 had problems in the areas of social skills and behavior. Problems with aggression and difficulty paying attention were also commonly found in this group.

-Children who didn’t watch much as toddlers, but who were heavy viewers by age 5.5 demonstrated problems with social skills.

-Children who watched TV heavily at age 2.5 but who had reduced their TV viewing time by age 5.5, showed no significant social or behavioral problems.

I think that the last point is one of the most interesting findings in this study. Even if a child was a heavy viewer as a toddler, as long as viewing is significantly reduced by age 5.5, then the negative behavioral and social effects seem to be alleviated. In other words, preschool and kindergarten age is still not too late to reduce a child’s TV viewing and see improved behavior. Reducing or eliminating the TV, even after the toddler years, can have a positive impact on behavior and social skills.

Today’s Phoenix newspaper (The Arizona Republic) had an article about the study, that added a few bits of interesting information. The Arizona Republic reporter interviewed Jill Stamm, a psychologist and co-founder of New Directions Institute for Infant Brain Development in Phoenix. According to Ms. Stamm, TV’s short bursts of programming and commercials trains an infant’s brain to “scan and shift” rather than to pay attention for a long period of time. Once this brain pattern is set, it can inhibit the ability to learn later in life. She says: “What the brain gets wired for is quick hits of salient information. The brain gets used to that, and that’s what it wants.” Ms. Stamm says that the brain is adaptable and by reducing or ceasing TV viewing altogether, particularly before the age of 5, the brain will rewire itself and repair the damage.

There is also mention of a former Phoenix school teacher who says she could pick out the heavy TV viewers in her class simply by their behavior. They were the kids who couldn’t sit still and had short attention spans. She also said that “their vocabularies were limited and their writing less descriptive.”

Additionally, the study gaged the effects on 5.5 year-old children of having a television in the bedroom. 41% of the parents surveyed reported that their child had a TV in their room. Not surprisingly, the study found that having a set in the bedroom was linked to sleep problems.

LINKS:

Read the summary of the study at the Pediatrics website, here.

The Arizona Republic Article: TV Bad for Kids, New Study Reports

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By Mom Unplugged, May 7, 2007 12:57 pm

Just because it is no longer “officially” TV Turn-Off Week, doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to be conscious of your family’s screen-time.

There are a lot of great reasons out there for “turning it off,” or at least minimizing your TV and computer usage. Here are a few internet resources that I have come across that really address this issue nicely:

• The Not Quite Crunchy Parent, a participant in my TV Turn-Off Week Blog Challenge, wrote two very interesting posts about TV. The first, TV Turnoff Talk, is a great general list of some excellent reasons to turn off the TV. The second, The Ancillary Impact of Too Much TV, contains some great links to current scientific research on the effects of TV on children.

A few reasons on her list include the well-known facts that excessive TV appears to contribute to childhood obesity and violence, as well as the behavioral benefits demonstrated by TV-free children: less aggression, more creativity, longer attention spans, and an interest in reading.

• The Simple Dollar has a great post entitled Ten Financial Reasons To Turn Off Your Television - And Ten Things To Replace It With. If money is what speaks to you, then read it!

Think of what you could spend your money on (or put into savings) without a cable bill and the added electricity of one or more TVs in your house. Then there are the less obvious financial benefits such as less exposure to commercial marketing (perhaps you’ll save money there too!) and spending less money on fast-food or ready-made meals because you don’t have time to make a dinner from scratch if you have to catch your favorite show.

I really like this post because it has some very creative reasons for turning it off, many of which I had never thought of before. It is definitely worth a read and will make you think about your money, and how TV affects your spending.

• There are websites out there that also encourage less TV-watching. I link to some of them in my left sidebar. I won’t relist them all here, but I will highlight a few of them.

The Center For Screen Time Awareness may be the best known of these websites, since they are the sponsor of the annual National TV Turn-Off Week. Several others that are a good resource and have lots of interesting links are TV Smarter, LimiTV, White Dot and Kill Your Television (rather “emphatic,” but quite complete). White Dot also has a Turning Off TV Forum.

• If you are wondering what TV-free kids are like, here is a link to one of my favorite articles (found on The Center For Screen Time Awareness website): “TV Free Families: Are They Lola Granolas, Normal Joes or High and Holy Snots?” This article presents the results of a 1999 study conducted by Barbara Brock, a professor of Recreation Management at Eastern Washington University. She sent a 22-page questionnaire to nearly 400 TV-free families and had a 72.7% response rate. The results are very interesting and seem to confirm the beneficial effects of turning off the TV found in other research.

My children have been TV-free their whole lives and I sometimes wonder about how that will ultimately affect them, so I find this study to be very reassuring!

• Finally, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under age 2 watch no TV at all. Please read their recommendation at my post TV and Toddlers. For a while now, I have had the following sign on my blog:

It is finally being noticed and has appeared on several other blogs too. I am so pleased that others are willing to help spread the word, and I have moved my sign to a more prominent location. Please feel free to place it on your blog too. It can be found at Aylmer Press. You can also print full sized ones to hang in schools or other public places if you would like. Steve Kokette found my blog and was kind enough to contact me about his sign, so please include a link to his site if you use it. Thanks for helping spread the word!

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By Mom Unplugged, April 29, 2007 9:27 am

I heard an interesting story on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday this morning. The FCC has recently issued a report regarding the effects of TV violence on children.

The finding: Surprise!!! TV Violence is bad! It can lead to increased aggression in children. Who knew? The FCC would like congress to come up with a definition of “harmful violence” and issue guidelines for regulating such TV shows.

Defining “harmful” vs. “non-harmful” violence seems a daunting enough task however, as you might imagine, Congress will also be faced with a whole host of Constitutional, free speech issues. Plus there is the more technical question of how to regulate something that can be watched anywhere at anytime thanks to the latest technology.

The NPR story, Breaking Down the FCC Report on TV Violence is a really interesting summary of the FCC report and its recommendations. If you have four spare minutes in your day, listen to it.

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By Mom Unplugged, April 26, 2007 8:52 am

I hope TV Turn-Off Week is going well for you and your families. Is it quieter around the house? Are the kids playing more, reading more…maybe even listening more?

According to Shari Barkin, a pediatrician at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, in Nashville, Tennessee, better listening may be one of the first things parents notice after several TV-free days. She also says that “when children are exposed to fewer stimuli — eliminating the noise and distraction that comes with TV — the easier it is to stay focused on the task at hand.”

For more on TV, kids, and TV Turn-Off Week, including the reaction of a 10 year-old, please read the transcript or listen to the recording of an NPR story that was on Morning Edition this morning: TV-Turnoff Week: Helping Parents Pull the Plug.

Don’t forget to join our TV Turn-Off Week Blog Challenge, it is not too late! Click here for more info.