Turn on the TV, plop little kiddie in front of it and you get peace and quiet. And that’s the problem. When the boob tube is blasting, babies and their parents or caregivers don’t engage in conversation or much interaction at all. As a result, the kids are slower to develop their language skills, according to a new study.
Researchers found that each hour of TV was associated with a decrease of 770 words the child heard from an adult, Science Daily reported. The kids in the study wore small digital recorders on radom days for up to two years, which allowed the researchers to track the sounds they were exposed to and made. A total of 329 kids ranging from two months to four years old participated.
“Adults typically utter approximately 941 words per hour. Our study found that adult words are almost completely eliminated when television is audible to the child,” said lead researcher Dimitri A. Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington medical school. The research was published in the Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has long recommended that parents refrain from turning on the TV for kids under the age of two. (This means those Baby Einstein videos, too!) Instead, parents should play, read, sing and listen to music with their child.
For older kids, these tips are encouraged:
– Keep TV off during mealtime.
– Limit TV to two hours or less per day.
– Avoid using TV as a reward.
– Keep TV out of bedrooms.
The 2-year-old boy apparently was climbing onto a cabinet or dresser when the television set fell on him. George Perdomo Jr. was in his apartment in Oklahoma City when the accident occurred, The Oklahoman reported.
Falling TVs are becoming a more common hazard and caused the deaths of 40 children between 2005 and 2006, according to government statistics. Safety experts recommend that toys and other distractions not be placed anywhere near the TV so children are not tempted to climb furniture to get to them. Safety gates should also be placed around the TV area, especially for television sets that are thin and light and easier to knock over.
No, TV won’t harm your baby. But it won’t turn her into a genius either, despite what those Baby Einstein video marketers say.
A new study says that preschoolers who may have watched more television as babies scored about as well on verbal and motor skills tests as those who spent less time in front of the boob tube. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, tested 872 children when they were six months old and then when they were age 3.
The average kid spends about an hour a day in front of the TV at age six months and 1.4 hours a day by age 2, according to researchers from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Kids in lower-income families or whose mother had less education are more likely to watch more TV.
The results of the study isn’t a rationale to let TV continue to babysit the kids, though. Researchers caution that as children get older, too much TV watching produces a slew of negative effects – kids become fat, lazy, sleepless and develop attention problems.
The girl was crushed to death by a 32-inch TV on Sunday morning in her El Monte, Calif., home.
The child, who was in a room with a sleeping adult, was apparently trying to turn on the TV or get something else off the dresser on which it was perched. She pulled on the television cord, bringing the TV down on top of her, according to the Associated Press.
A detective responding said that there was no evidence of foul play, and called the accident an “unfortunate tragedy.” Unfortunately, it happens all too often, with children in Las Vegas and Naples, Fla., dying from falling TVs in recent months.
Years ago, your parents told you it was a bad thing to watch too much TV. It still is. A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry indicates that greater exposure to TV by adolescents leads to increased risk of depression, particularly for males.
The study, led by Dr. Brian A. Primack of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, first surveyed the amount of time 4,100 healthy non-depressed adolescents spent watching TV or videos, listening to the radio or playing computer games. Seven years later, when the participants were in their early twenties, they were examined again.
The more TV they had watched, they more likely they were to be depressed.
“We did not find a consistent relationship between development of depressive symptoms and exposure to videocassettes, computer games, or radio,” the researchers reported.
Among the possible reasons for the TV/depression link: the fact that TV sucks up time that could be used for socializing and playing sports. Then there’s TV’s well-known ability to promote feelings of inadequacy among viewers, or even take the place of all-important sleep.
The little boy had been playing with three siblings when a stand holding the TV was knocked over, and the TV fell on his head, Salt Lake City authorities said. He was knocked unconscious. His father pulled the TV off the child, who was then taken to the hospital in extremely serious condition, the Deseret News reported. The boy, 18 months old, was not publicly identified.
TV tip-overs have become a common hazard for young children, particularly as TV sets become thinner and lighter and thus easier to knock over. Between 2005 and 2006, falling televisions caused the death of 40 kids, according to the latest government statistics.
Parents are advised to secure large items such as TVs, stands and bookcases. Remote controls and toys should be kept off the top of the TV so that children are not tempted to climb the set to get them.
UPDATE: The child died on Monday, a day after he was taken to the hospital.
During his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama ran an ad on TV asking parents to “Turn it Off.” Now a new study underlines his point. If your kid is fat, smoking, sexually active and gets bad grades, chances are, they’re spending way too much time in front of the boob tube.
The study analyzed all the research done on TV, video games and other media since 1980 and concluded that there’s plenty of evidence that it’s all bad for your kids. “Coach potato does, unfortunately, sum it up pretty well,” Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, of the National Institutes of Health’s clinical center, one of the study’s five reviewers, told the New York Times. Emanuel, by the way, is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s new chief of staff.
Because health factors and socioeconomic status can also contribute to obesity and other bad habits, researchers said they looked at studies that controlled for those variables. The only major health ailment not strongly connected with TV overdose is attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the report said.
Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on kids and media that helped finance the study, is hoping that the report will spur lawmakers to pay for more media education efforts. It also wants the entertainment industry to be more responsible, however naive that might be. Read the report here.
Two little boys in Las Vegas died in separate tragedies, both of which might have been preventable.
One boy’s grandmother was babysitting him at his home when the family dog mauled him on Wednesday, Fox 5 News in Las Vegas reported. The grandmother tried to rescue the two-year-old, but was injured when she tried to pry the mixed breed terrier off of his neck. Police said the fatality showed how caregivers cannot leave young children alone with dogs, even for a minute.
“This is an incident where we know our dogs, and we think we know their temperament. This shows that any dog, at any time, can revert to instinctual behavior,” police spokesman Bill Cassell told the TV news station.
On Thanksgiving Day, another two-year-old child was playing with other kids when a television fell on top on him, the TV station reported. The TV was sitting on top of a dresser and was somehow jolted, police said.
This is the second fatality this month involving a toddler and a TV set. Last week, a Florida boy was killed when a TV set and stand fell on him. His older sibling had climbed up on the furniture to turn the TV off when the accident occurred. Safety experts say that such “tip-overs” are increasingly common, and parents need to secure the television sets.
Sixteen-month-old Julian Sanchez was struck on Wednesday when an older sibling climbed up on the family’s four-foot tall TV stand to turn the set off. Both the 36-inch TV and the furniture fell on Julian.
“I was just with him,” said Julian’s father, Reinaldo Sanchez, in a report from WBBH NBC 2 News. “He never ever cried — just an awesome baby.” This is the second tragedy in recent years for the Naples-area family. In 2006, their baby died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
TV tip-overs have become so common that in October, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a report on the dangers. Between 2005 and 2006, there were 40 reports of deaths by TV. Officials advise that parents of young children remove items such as toys and remote controls from the top of the TV and TV stands that might tempt kids to climb on them. Some stores offer “anti-tip” kits, which contain tools and straps to secure furniture and TVs.
Children’s television, it turns out, is just as bad as you feared. Broadcasters are required to air three hours of kids’ educational TV a week, but the law doesn’t specify what the shows must contain. The result, according to a new study, is that many are lousy.
Researchers for Children Now, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization, looked at 120 episodes of children’s educational television across 40 programs. Each was evaluated on a range of criteria associated with children’s learning from television.
Only one of every eight shows was rated “highly educational.” Nearly one of every four were classified as “minimally educational.” The researchers also found that 28 percent of the episodes were high in aggressive content, which includes physical or social aggression.
“The study certainly suggests that the FCC should be monitoring compliance with the children’s programming requirements much more closely,” lead researcher Dale Kunkel, a professor at the University of Arizona, said in a news release.
Sesame Street (PBS) earned an exemplary rating, as did seven others: Beakman’s World (Commercial), Between the Lions (PBS), 3-2-1 Penguins (Commercial), Cyberchase (PBS), The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (Commercial), Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman (PBS) and Teen Kids News (Commercial).
