ChildrenMy last article, focusing on effects of technology on children, contained a comment that I was not aware of any research demonstrating that watching too much TV had any lasting negative effects on children. The one exception appears to be regarding violence. There is substantial and consistent data indicating an increase in aggressive behavior in children who watched significant hours of violent TV shows and video games. Meanwhile, a few days after I had written this statement about the absence of evidence, a major story appears throughout the media stating that an article published in the current issue of Pediatrics reported that the more children watched TV, the more problems they had with attention deficits.
The timing was eerie but the articles were misleading. The research is virtually useless. However no one seemed to be willing to recognize that until a Wall Street Journal article pointed out some of the deficiencies in the research. Of course, there was no equal space or time devoted to putting this in proper perspective. I guess admitting to mistakes, like always in the media, is at best a small note buried somewhere. Negative, scary headlines are much more profitable.
My immediate reaction to the original articles was to recognize that, once again, correlation was being confused with cause. The study, using survey data from parents, claimed to show that each increased hour in TV watching by young children, ages 1 and 3, resulted in increased attention deficits at age 7. If this was really a well-designed study (no way to tell by the content of the articles or TV reports) and the results where valid, that still wouldn’t be proof of the headline conclusion. That’s because correlation (the degree to which two events or attributes seem related to each other) is not the same as causality. There can be other embedded factors that actually provide the real explanation about the outcome of the study, in this case being the alleged increase in attentional problems.
For example, an alternative explanation is that children who already possess a tendency to have short-attention spans are likely to be more challenging to care for, putting more pressure on parents and resulting in their making increased use of TV for some relief. Also, there was also no indication if socioeconomic factors were taken into account yet poverty is known to produce more children with attentional difficulties. This is what I mean by confusing correlation with cause.
The misreporting of research is a serious media problem. It happens nearly every day. Major newspapers have a science editor who must be capable of understanding the simple rules of what constitutes meaningful research results, yet we read endless stories about the effects of food, drink, and various activities on our health and welfare that are presented as facts, not speculations. Usually there will be reports, months or even years later, that contradict the original results. The science editors are simply not doing a responsible job and people can be harmed by it. Parents are especially a target because it helps to sell papers and magazines to offer these kinds of “definitive” headlines. It feeds right into the national obsession of parents to do the right thing and to look to the “experts” for answers.
This article about attentional problems was one of the worst. It used the term “attention deficit” as if to imply these children had the actual disorder that is diagnosed by specialists and that requires treatment to be corrected. Yet the research was just done by parental survey, not utilizing teacher reports and professional assessment. Very misleading. Nor was there any intervention done at age 7 to explore how reversible these reported tendencies were. We don’t even know if the children demonstrated a level of attentional difficulty that impeded school functioning!
The reports then quoted expert speculations that the problem could be that the rapid images of TV may impact the brain development of young children, changing neural structure in some unknown way that is harmful to developing concentration skills and notes that these changes are probably permanent. Talk about scaring parents! I consider it unprofessional to put such unsupported speculations in the public media. It’s tough enough to raise children without implications that “too much TV” could cause irreversible brain damage! In fact, the books and articles I’ve been reading lately are all stressing how much flexibility and change the brain is capable of over the course of our lifetime – that major growth and change takes place right through late adolescence – in marked contrast to old theories that everything was pretty much locked in by age 5.
But the final blow was a simple line in the Journal article which stated that the data was collected in the 1980’s, long before significant improvements were made in TV programming for young children. In fact, the research didn’t even collect data on what the children were watching! I have to question why such old data, in a poorly constructed study, was just published in Pediatrics. Furthermore, I have to ask why the media failed to do its homework and present this information with proper criticism underscoring its limited value.
Parents need to be wary about what gets reported as the latest research findings. It takes many replications and proper research procedures before anyone can begin to conclude we may actually have some new knowledge. The rush to judgment is reflective of our society as a whole. As parents you need to be more cautious, more cynical about new “facts”, and put more trust in your own intuition. It will save you a lot of unnecessary angst.
So I stand by my original statement. There is no data that shows the amount of TV watching to be harmful. In fact, as the following email from one of my readers indicates, TV watching can be a very positive experience.
“…I have sat with [my son] watching Sesame Street or Teletubbies with him in my lap, leaning back against my chest, and few experiences are more intimate.”
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