TV Is Neither Good Nor Bad For Babies

Cross the great TV debate off your parental worry list.

According to a new study from the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, television “doesn’t seem to have an influence on cognition at age 3.” This is despite the fact that 30 percent of parents surveyed believe that watching TV actually helps babies get smarter.

Yes, you read that correctly. Almost one third of the parents in this study believe that planting kids in front of the device formerly known as “the idiot box” can actually make their kids smarter. Provided the right programs are on, of course.

I’m not against kids watching television. I watch television, I grew up watching television, and I’m (mostly) fine. (The parts that aren’t fine are not due to excessive TV watching.) But I have no illusions that watching TV is going to make my kids smarter. Dumber, maybe. But not smarter.

Marie Evans Schmidt, a research associate at the Center, said that parents probably think the so-called “educational” programs are beneficial because of “the way those products have been marketed.” Baby Einstein, we’re looking at you. We liked your videos anyway, but we never really believed that they were adding points to our baby’s IQ.

To me, the best news is that the study found that there is no harm in kids watching TV. Still, Schmidt warned that “parents should be aware that infants watching TV may be at risk of obesity, sleep disturbances and possibly attention problems. We don’t want this study to be viewed as a license for babies to watch TV because they won’t be harmed. It might be that the effects don’t show up until children are older.” What a wet blanket those science-types are.

Do the results of this study surprise you? That is, did you think that you were doing your kids a favor by making them watch TV? Or are you more surprised to find that people actually thought that having babies watch lots of TV was a good thing?

Source: ABC

Image: Amazon