Study Finds Extra Hour of TV is Bad for Toddlers

[exfileme]

Here's another silly study about how the entertainment industry is ruining our youth.

Study Finds Extra Hour of TV is Bad for Toddlers : Read more

 

[Spooderman]

Good thing that my parents had enough sense not to buy me my own computer at age 3.

 

[eklipz330]

i fear for our future generations just as past generations feared for us... but i think my reasons are more solid

most consumer devices are purely for entertainment. you need to be somehow entertained 24/7 no matter what. it distances you from social events as well as increasing your chance of depression. not only that, but with all this technology at our disposal, people use it as a crutch. now that memorization is no longer needed, it's just going to get worse. then all tech will just stop working for one reason or another, and we'll just be helpless

just my two cents. then again, im a self professed pessimist.

 

[eklipz330]

now that i know why my high school didnt allow calculators, i appreciate it. my math skills are above average to peers of similar age.

 

[Guest]

Are you kidding me. Another "awesome" Canadian study - taxpayer money spend well, by a Marxist/Socialist academic.

The TV watching has very little to do with it. The TV watching is only a reflection of the type of parenting 'inflicted' in the toddlers. So instead of taking accountability for poor parenting, this biased study goes on and absolves the incompetence of the parents involved. Don't blame the consumer devices (inanimate objects) for the lack of social skills exhibited by the toddlers...how about you look at the source, the parents. That is like blaming the knife for cutting your finger. And people eat this stuff up like gospel.

 

[drwho1]

LOL
Keyboards are the cause of (insert expletive here) on the internet.
Most people interviewed claimed that the "keyboard make them do it".

common!

 

[nebun]

this study is so wrong....very wrong...most kids these days are smarter because of the educational programing they watch on tv....most parents would rather have their kids watch tv instead of bothering them

 

[GoldenI]

eklipz, who is to say that one simply does not benefit from social situations, rather it has a negative effect on some people?... There ARE introverts out there who simply prefer their own company over the company of another. Sure, some social skills are great to have; however, that being said, there is really no need to always want to go out and be social. I am perfectly fine spending my Friday nights alone, having a cup of tea or something of the sort.

Each person is different. Also, pretty much every famous intellectual was introverted. Perhaps that is saying something?

 

[b23h]

That's a hell of a lot of editorializing by the author of the article. I am particularly unimpressed by the characterization of the study as "silly."

 

[MajinCry]

Coming up next: Eating fatty foods is bad for you!

 

[CaedenV]

TV is a horrible horrible thing which should be banned entirely. Video media in general is something that should generally be avoided until middleschool or highschool after some discipline of critical thinking has been established.

I am not saying that there should be no videos for kids. I have a 2 very young children, and I will freely admit that sometimes you just need a nap, or to get the dishes done, and sometimes a show or movie is the only thing you can trust to keep the kid's attention long enough for you to accomplish something without being bothered. But this should be the exception to the rule rather than the rule itself.

But computer use is something else entirely. While TV (and video media in general) is by its very nature a passive medium which teaches people to accept what is presented to them, almost everything on a computer is interactive and at the very least teaches cause and effect relationships. Most things on a computer are allegorical or abstracted, which teaches kids critical thinking even from a young age. I had the good fortune of having a dad who worked in the tech industry when I was young, and was literally the only one of my high school class to have (and use) a computer before I went to school. Granted I am not the sort of person who is motivated enough to monetize my good fortune, but it has helped me to not fall into most of the same traps that my peers have fallen into. It taught me that I am in control of what I want to be exposed to, and that if I want a better life then I can expose my mind to those things which are helpful to following that path. Using computers as something other than a media consumption device makes people independent free thinkers who are slaves to nobody except for their own shortcomings.

The big issue that we are having today though is that my generation which was brought up on TV now has a bunch of kids who are starting to use computers... but my generation is teaching the next generation to use computers as a purely media consumption device rather than the tool that it can be! And this is horribly sad! There are awesome kid's games, tools, and programs that can teach programming. The rise of the maker movement has brought so many great tools which could be used by schools and families to educate children to learn and discover the world around them and how it all works... but instead we are training up yet another generation of passive users who will mostly amount to nothing for lack of vision, parenting, and competent teachers.

But I guess that is the point after all. When you are an incompetent parent (and we all start out that way) then it is easy to assume that those on TV who have 'made it' in life would be much better teachers than yourself. I just hope that those who read this have the courage to make mistakes while parenting rather than making the mistake of differing parenting to someone or something else.

 

[gopher1369]

"This is the first time ever that a stringently controlled associational birth cohort study "

Ohh, stringently controlled, let's read on.....

" it doesn't take the parents' economic status under consideration, their age, their educational status"

Oh, err, so in fact no controls were implemented . This study is absolute junk and no conclusions can be drawn from it whatsoever, except perhaps that the authors need to go read up on good scientific practice.

 

[dextermat]

This is bulls**t, My son is 2.5 year old and already count to 10, know a few letters of the alphabet and associate them with word and watch about 1-2 hours of tv per day.
The problem is a tv is not a babysitter and not a teacher. It also depends on what they are watching.

 

[joebob2000]

Wow, the reading comprehension skills are in full effect. Funny how the TV apologists are the worst offenders. The summary was written by Kevin Parrish, who clearly has an agenda as stated in the first line dismissing the study with an ad hominem. You should probably look up the definition of key potential confounder, as the study did indeed use regression analysis to isolate the relationship to TV watching, instead of, as others wrongly suggested, things like income or education level of the parents. Sit your kids in front of TV all you want, but don't say the warning signs weren't there when they turn out to be underachievers who refuse to move out of your basement.

 

[wysir]

Bullying is usually from lack of motor and cognitive skill and is not a direct result on how much TV a kid watches.

However, less TV = more time to work on those skills, thus likely resulting in more advanced skills. I believe that it is important for children to not be exposed to too much TV, in order to develop their minds better. An educational video from time to time is good, especially in car trips. I'm no expert on this, just my .02

 

[mobrocket]

Is having your kids watch tv any worse then making them go to sunday school?

i find it funny that most of these studies are done by baby boomers trying to bash all future generations... even thou most of the problems we have are cus of them

 

[RealBeast]

Perhaps the study authors should learn a bit of statistics, such as the fact that a correlation does not mean causation.

Bad parents that use a TV to babysit are bad parents, and likely that is the root issue.

 

[fixxxer113]

If that article came out in the 90's, I would call BS. The quality of kid's programs was really high and there were a lot of educational programs also. I learned a lot from TV those years. But with the unbelievable crap that's on TV these days, It's not that strange... a few seconds of "honey boo-boo" is enough to drop your IQ