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Like the sorcerer of old, the television set casts its magic spell, freezing speech and action, turning the living into silent statues so long as the enchantment lasts. The primary danger of the television screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces - although there is danger there - as in the behavior it prevents: The talks, the games, the family festivals, and the arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and through which his character is formed. Turning on the television set can turn off the process that transforms children into people. - Urie Bronfenbrenner
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Learning Language
One of the most important skills that very young children learn is how to understand and speak their family language.
It turns out that the more a parent and/or caregivers speaks to a child, the greater the chance that that child will have a better vocabulary and other language skills by age 3. And that the child's vocabulary and other language skills at age 3, were predictive of his or her vocabulary and other language skills by age 9-10.
"Over a three-year period, Hart and Risley painstakingly recorded one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families, with children from 7 months to 36 months of age. The researchers found that the words parents speak directly to their children average from 2,153 words per hour all the way down to 616 words per hour. That may not seem like much, but that could add up to a 30 million word gap by age 3." - Commercial Appeal (Dec 2008)
"From our preschool data we had been confident that the rate of vocabulary growth would predict later performance in school; we saw that it did. For the 29 children observed when they were 1-2 years old, the rate of vocabulary growth at age 3 was strongly associated with scores at age 9-10 on both the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) of receptive vocabulary (r = .58) and the Test of Language Development-2: Intermediate (TOLD) (r = .74) and its subtests (listening, speaking, semantics, syntax)." - American Educator (Spring 2003)
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Do Young Children Learn Language From Television?
"The results of this study have important implications for language acquisition. It indicates exposure to language via television is insufficient for teaching language to very young children. To learn new words, children must be actively engaged in the process with responsive language teachers." - Science Daily (July 2007)
"Developmental psychologists say the Vanderbilt research offers an intriguing clue to a phenomenon called the ”video deficit“. Toddlers who have no trouble understanding a task demonstrated in real life often stumble when the same task is shown onscreen. They need repeated viewings to figure it out." - Indian Express (Sept 2006)
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More TV = Less Talking With Young Children = Language Delay
"We've known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why," said Christakis. "This study is the first to demonstrate that when the television is on, there is reduced speech in the home. Infants vocalize less and their caregivers also speak to them more infrequently." - Science Daily (June 2009) Via Unplug Your Kids
"Even infants zone out in front of the television, and it turns out this translates into less time interacting with parents and possible lags in language development, a new study finds." - Live Science (June 2009)
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More TV = Language Delay
"The study, by Professor Dimitri Christakis from the Seattle Children’s Research Institute in America, looked at 78 studies published over the past 25 years... A 2008 study in Thailand, also published in Acta Paediatrica, found that if children under 12 months watched TV for more than two hours a day they were six times more likely to have delayed language skills." - Daily Express (Jan 2009) - More on this study - Science Daily (Jan 2009) - More on this study - E! Science News (Jan 2009)
"The scientists found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them." - Science Daily (Aug 2007)
"Can the noise level inside your house actually make it harder for your baby to learn to talk? Researchers now say turning down the TV can actually help your child find their voice faster. " - Science Daily (Sept 2005)
"Children under the age of three who are allowed to watch too much television have below-average reading abilities by the time they are six, a new study claims." - Telegraph (Nov 2005)
"Watching TV programmes or DVDs aimed at infants can actually delay language development, according to a number of studies. For example, a 2008 Thai study published in Acta Paediatrica found that if children under 12 months watched TV for more than two hours a day they were six times more likely to have delayed language skills. Another study found that children who watched baby DVDs between seven and 16 months knew fewer words than children who did not." - Scientific Blogging (Jan 2009)
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More TV = More Behavioral Problems
"Three-year-old children who are exposed to more TV appear to be at an increased risk for exhibiting aggressive behavior, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals." - Science Daily (Nov 2009)
"Daily television viewing for two or more hours in early childhood can lead to behavioral problems and poor social skills, according to a study of children 2.5 to 5.5 years of age conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health." - Science Daily (Oct 2007)
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More TV = Less Attention
 "Conditioning attentional skills: examining the effects of the pace of television editing on children's attention"
"Methods: School children (aged 4–7 years) were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Each group was presented with either a fast- or slow-edit 3.5-min film of a narrator reading a children's story. Immediately following film presentation, both groups were presented with a continuous test of attention."
"Results: Performance varied according to experimental group and age. In particular, we found that children's orienting networks and error rates can be affected by a very short exposure to television."
"Conclusion: Just 3.5 min of watching television can have a differential effect on the viewer depending on the pacing of the film editing. These findings highlight the potential of experimentally manipulating television exposure in children and emphasize the need for more research in this previously under-explored topic." - Acta Pædiatrica (June 2009)
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More TV = Less Playing and Less Interaction with Parent/Caregiver
"A new study has found that leaving your TV set on disrupts young children while they are playing, even if the channel is tuned to adult shows. This means that simply having the TV on, even in the background, may be detrimental to children's development." - Science Daily (July 2008)
"Researchers Found That Background TV Could Hinder Learning" - ABC News (July 2008)
"Daily television viewing for two or more hours in early childhood can lead to behavioral problems and poor social skills, according to a study of children 2.5 to 5.5 years of age conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health." - Science Daily (Oct 2007)
"It turns out that background television -- even simple background noise -- can affect young children more than we might think. According to a series of studies that have accumulated over the past decade, growing up in a noisy or "always on" TV environment may have negative consequences for speech development, playtime and parent-child interaction." - Washington Post (Oct 2007)
"We've known for a long time that chronic noise is having a devastating effect on academic performance of children in noisy homes and schools" - Education World (July 1997)
Any TV is bad TV for children under 3 - Seattle Post-Intelligencer (July 2005)
"The more television infants and toddlers watch, the more likely they are to have trouble paying attention and concentrating during their early school years, a study reports Monday." - USAToday (April 2004)
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More TV = More Weight
"In a study of more than 1,000 children between the ages of 36 months and 54 months, those who were awake and in a room where a television was on for more than two hours per day were significantly more likely to be overweight or obese, reported Julie C. Lumeng, M.D., of the University of Michigan here, and colleagues. " - Med Page Today (April 2006)
"A striking study says one in five 4-year-olds is overweight, lengthening the odds these youngsters will stay obese later in life and encounter a string of health problems." - San Francisco Chronicle (April 2009)
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Scientists Recommending No Television for Young Children
TV channel for babies? Pediatricians say turn it off - San Francisco Chronicle (Sept 2006)
"Nine out of 10 children under the age of two watch television regularly, with some spending as much as 40 per cent of waking hours in front of the box, a study found. This is despite the lack of scientific research to demonstrate that watching TV is beneficial for toddlers, said the review, published in the child health journal Acta Paediatrica. The study, by Professor Dimitri Christakis from the Seattle Children’s Research Institute in America, looked at 78 studies published over the past 25 years." - Daily Express (Jan 2009) - More on this study - Science Daily (Jan 2009) - More on this study - E! Science News (Jan 2009) - More on this study - The Medical News (Jan 2009)
"The public health implications of early television and video viewing are potentially large. There are both theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that the effects of media exposure on children's development are more likely to be adverse before the age of about 30 months than afterward," - Science Daily (May 2007)
"Children under the age of two should be banned from watching television, according to guidelines prepared for the Australian government." - The Telegraph (Oct 2009)
Anger at Sesame Street for babies - BBC (April 2006)
Experts Rip 'Sesame' TV Aimed at Tiniest Tots - Washington Post (March 2006)
AAP - Understanding TV's effects on the developing brain - Brainy-Child (May 1998)
The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under 2 should not watch TV. Why would any parent disagree? - Salon.com (Aug 1999)
"Pediatricians again advise against TV for very young kids" - Current (Aug 1999)
"Evidence thus far indicates that the AAP recommendation is well taken, although considerably more research is needed." - American Behavioral Scientist (2005)
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Marketing TV to Parents
"France's broadcast authority has banned French channels from marketing TV shows to children under 3 years old, to shield them from developmental risks it says television viewing poses at that age." - Otago Daily Times (Aug 2008)
"A Boston-based child advocacy group filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission yesterday charging the makers of the popular Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby videos with false and deceptive advertising." - Boston.com (May 2006)
Stage Prop for the Today Show - CCFC (2004)
"Commerciaizing Babyhood" - CCFC
DVD series for babies, parents fuels TV debate - Boston.com (March 2006)
PBS imported Teletubbies from the BBC last year and is aggressively marketing the program as educational for "children as young as one." - The American Prospect (May 1999)
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Young Children Are Watching Much TV
"Children who attend home-based day-care programs are watching twice as much television per day as was previously thought..." - The Washington Post (Nov 2009) and The Answer Sheet (Nov 2009)
"They found that by three months of age, before infants are capable of sitting up unaided, about 40% regularly watched television, DVDs, or videos, and by 24 months of age, 90% of kids were habitually plugged in. The children were regularly exposed to visual media by a median age of nine months, and average daily viewing time increased from one hour daily at 12 months, to more than 1.5 hours by 24 months, the authors." - Med Page Today (May 2007)
"Approximately 40 percent of three-month old children and about 90 percent of children age 24 months and under regularly watch television, DVDs or videos, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine." - Science Daily (May 2007)
"Although parents believe in the educational value of TV, DVDs and videos, just 32 percent of parents always watched with their children. Parents also had an inflated idea of how much of these media other children were watching and believed that their children viewed less than the average amount. The study indicated that the perceived average viewing for other families is 73 percent higher than the actual average. "At the end of the day the amount of TV viewing is based on what parents think is normal," said Zimmerman. "Perceptions of norms tend to shape behavior even if those norms are inflated."" - The Medical News (May 2007)
"Despite warnings, most U.S. babies watch TV" - Reuters (May 2007)
"Heavy TV viewing under 2 is found. Ignoring risks, parents cite 'educational' value." - Boston.com (May 2007)
Study: Most Young Kids Glued to the TV - San Francisco Chronicle (May 2006)
Watching Children Watch TV - Washington Post (May 2006)
Many parents encouraging tots to watch TV - MSNBC (May 2006)
New Study Shows How Kids’ Media Use Helps Parents Cope - Kaiser Family Foundation (May 2006)
Report finds pre-schoolers use media as much as play outside - CNN (Nov 2003)
"Young children, more used to watching television than talking, are to be encouraged to improve their communication skills." - BBC (Nov 2003)
"The study also found that single mothers and mothers with less education are more likely to have children whose TV viewing exceeds AAP guidelines. And, children who watch at least three hours of TV a day at age 2 are more than twice as likely as other children to watch at least three hours a day at age 6." - About.com
"Once upon a time, we read bedtime stories. But not so much today as fewer parents share books with kids." - Houston Chronicle (Dec 2007)
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