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Toddler TV exposure linked to later problems

E-mail | Print | Comments () Posted by Elizabeth Cooney May 4, 2010 11:05 AM

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Children who watched more television than their peers when they were toddlers and preschoolers were more likely to have trouble when they reached fourth grade, with poorer academic achievement, psychosocial behavior, and physical well-being, a Canadian study reports.

For each hour of television above the average that the more than 1,300 children had watched as toddlers, their classroom engagement fell by 7 percent and their math achievement by 6 percent, the researchers found. Reading did not differ. Each additional hour of TV above the average was associated with a 10 percent higher likelihood of being victimized by classmates, according to a social behavior questionnaire completed by teachers. Time spent being physically active fell 13 percent with each additional hour of TV watching as toddlers. Body mass index was 5 percent higher, and consumption of soft drinks and snacks was 9 percent and 10 percent higher, respectively. The results were similar for the 4-year-old preschoolers.

"For the two and a half year olds, the aftereffects did not fade out after eight years," lead author Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal said in an interview. "Families should understand that the television is not just a piece of innocuous furniture in the family room."

Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston, called the findings important. "Because of the size of the sample, I think that these are pretty hefty changes," he said in an interview. He was not involved in the study, which appears in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. "We can't draw causal connections but we can certainly feel pretty confident about contributory connections."

Watching television may be one factor among others, he said, or it could be a key player influencing how well a child does later in life. Parents who just park their children in front of the television for more than two hours a day may behave in other ways that affect later skills, he said. They may also read to their children less or spend less time with their children pursuing open-ended, creative activities, for example. The Canadian researchers did take into account the mother's education, the child's temperament, and whether the child came from a single-parent family, factors that previous research has found to be related to TV viewing. When all of those things were equal, children who watched more television were still at higher risk of later problems.

The researchers tracked children enrolled in the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development. Parents answered questions about how much television their children watched when they were almost two and a half years old and again at almost four and half. When the children were in fourth grade, their teachers rated their academic performance compared with their classmates in math and reading as well as their psychosocial adjustment, including how engaged they were in the classroom and whether they were aggressors or victims in disputes with their classmates. Parents were asked how many hours their fourth-grade children spent being physically active and what they ate as snacks. Body mass index was also calculated.

At two and a half, the children in the study were exposed to an average of almost nine hours of television per week. That rose to almost 15 hours per week for four and a half year olds. These levels fall within guidelines set by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends no television for children under 2 and no more than 2 hours a day for children 2 and older. But 11 percent of the two year olds and 23 percent of the four year olds in the study were watching television more than two hours a day.

Pagani and her co-authors call the results "modest, yet nontrivial associations" that support other research suggesting that watching television can undermine skills important to learning. A child's ability to pay attention may be weaker and, coupled with a more passive disposition, could lead to less success in the classroom, they speculate, especially in math. The lack of a connection between television exposure and the children's fourth-grade reading achievement may relate to reading being better established than new math skills such as multiplication or division the children are learning, Pagani said. On social skills, the researchers suspect that time spent in front of the television took away from time learning how to interact with other children.

The study did not make distinctions between the kinds of television the children were watching, nor do the American Academy guidelines. But David Kleeman, president of American Center for Children and Media, said content is "enormously important." The center, an executive roundtable and development center for creative professionals, is supported by the television industry.

"There are plenty of longitudinal studies of various lengths with 'Sesame [Street]' and 'Between the Lions' and others that suggest viewing of educational content can positively influence outcomes. Also, content choice may suggest [the] level of parental involvement," he said in an e-mail interview. "Families need to set limits and develop smart media habits that work for them. ... We owe it to them to produce the highest quality content, imbued with what we know about child development and learning ... and to provide information to parents on how to make media work for their families."

Pagani said parents should stick to the two-hour limit for children over 2. Rich of Children's Hospital urges parents to choose television wisely for their children, watch it with them for times appropriate to their attention span, and then shut it off. "Exposure to television, particularly at an early age when they appear to be more vulnerable, has real outcomes," he

said.

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White Coat Notes covers the latest from the health care industry, hospitals, doctors offices, labs, insurers, and the corridors of government. Chelsea Conaboy previously covered health care for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Write her at cconaboy@boston.com. Follow her on Twitter: @cconaboy.

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