Should Toddlers Watch Tv?
Should Toddlers Watch Tv?
Should toddlers watch TV? Is educational programming beneficial for preschoolers? What happens when school-age children play violent video games? How are teenagers using the Internet? In today’s world, these are the questions that challenge parents on a daily (and sometimes hourly!) basis.
In the United States, 99 percent of all households with children have televisions, and half the children have a television in their bedrooms. Among households with eight to eighteen year olds, 85 percent have personal computers and 83 percent have video game consoles. Children ages two to seven watch on average 2.56 hours of television per day and children eight to eighteen watch on average 5.40 hours per day. Technological convergence, a hallmark of media use today, enables youth to access the same source from different, often portable, media platforms. As a result, America’s young people spend more time using media than they do engaging in any single activity other than sleeping.
Clearly, the lives of American children are saturated with media. And electronic media is NOT going away. So how does this overwhelming presence of media impact children’s well being? More importantly, what can parents do to exert some control over this media presence in their children’s lives?
In a recent issue of The Future of Children series, Children and Electronic Media, media experts discuss the most current information available concerning children’s media use and its potential impact on children’s development. These analyses highlight several important issues parents may want to consider concerning the current state of media saturation, how this may affect children, and what parents can do about it.
In the first place, the current emphasis on creating “educational” television for infants and toddlers is questionable. Research suggests that, at this young age, children learn much more effectively from real-life examples than they do from video demonstrations. While evidence indicates that educational programming can have a positive impact associated with both short- and long-term benefits for children ages three and older, this does not necessarily hold true for very young children.
Once children reach school age and start using various forms of media for longer periods of time and making some independent decisions concerning content, parental awareness and involvement remains imperative. Children’s exposure to violent content on television or in computer and video games, for instance, has been associated with both fearful and aggressive behavior. In addition, children of early school age appear to be especially susceptible to the marketing and advertising that occurs on many of the popular television shows and websites; this is especially true as commercials become more subtle, embedded in the content of the show or game.
By adolescence, technological convergence and the increasing portability of media platforms enable teens to have almost constant access to media—often at times and in places where adult supervision is absent. The ease with which children are able to communicate via the Internet and handheld devices appears to be a mixed blessing. Though research indicates that the majority of adolescents use the Internet to interact with people they know as opposed to strangers, even peer interaction can involve risk.
The same negative behaviors that some youth engage in off line – bullying and social exclusion, for example – can now take place on a much larger stage with many more observers. Moreover, these interactions often take place where no adults are monitoring the situation – on social networking sites and by viral e-mail. All youth media use is NOT negative, however. Clever non-profits and government are using media to positively influence adolescent health and well-being with exciting, interactive, “Web 2.0” media campaigns – many of which are highlighted in a Future of Children policy brief – that invite youth to create the content and own the message.
What, then, are the take away-messa