Blame the media!

IT IS MORE undeniable than ever that TV fries the brain. It also attacks the body. In the most sweeping review yet, researchers at Yale, the National Institutes of Health, and California Pacific Medical Center examined 173 studies since 1980 and have tied media exposure - including TV, movies, video games, and the Internet - to smoking, drugs, early sex, attention deficit, and a host of physical ailments including obesity. American youth spend an average of 45 hours a week with media, compared with 30 hours in school and 17 with parents. Negative effects start with eight hours a week of exposure.

The findings were released by the child advocacy group Common Sense Media. What should parents do with them? Co-reviewer and NIH bioethics chairman Ezekiel Emanuel said in an interview that children should not sit in front of screens before age 2, and preferably not before reading age, 5 or 6. After that, exposure should be no more than one hour a day. Parents must compensate by encouraging imaginary play, sports, musical instruments, and crafts.

Emanuel raised his children, now ages 18 to 25, with no TV in the house. "When parents say they can't do this, it's time to ask if this is about the kids or you," he said. "It's time to look deep into your soul."

There is a tantalizing chance such findings may finally go beyond pediatricians and children's advocates. Emanuel happens to be a brother of Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff for President-elect Barack Obama. A top applause line from candidate Obama was "government can't turn off the TV," and he is right. But TV so harms the bodies and brains of children that Obama and his government must make media overexposure a public health issue that sears America's soul.