Kids Health: TV and Attention Problems

One thing that has caught my eye lately are various reports regarding children's health issues. I'm going to try and post these reports when I can. My over-ambitious idea is to start a new blog and cross post, but I've decided to start small. I can always migrate when I think I've got enough to go on.

Here's a couple of studies that came out of New Zealand in September. It seems rather obvious that television viewing affects attention to some degree or another. This study preliminarily links TV to attention problems:

Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a study released on [September 4, 2007]

Reuters: Study links attention problems to early TV viewing

It goes on to quote the study

"Those who watched more than two hours, and particularly those who watched more than three hours, of television per day during childhood had above-average symptoms of attention problems in adolescence," Carl Landhuis of the University of Otago in Dunedin wrote in his report, published in the journal Pediatrics.

Although the study didn't prove a causal connection between the two, it did seem to indicate that those with less TV experienced fewer attention problems. A second article on the report speculates about reasons for the trend:

He [Carl Erik Landhuis of the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago, the study's first author] and his colleagues suggest that kids who get used to watching lots of attention-grabbing TV may find ordinary life situations -- like the classroom -- boring. It's also possible, they add, that TV may simply crowd out time spent doing other activities that can build attention and concentration skills, such as reading and playing games.

Reuter's: Too much TV ups kids' risk of attention problems

Bottom Line: Keep television viewing under 2 hours a day for those over two years old and no television for those under two. My personal preference is no television, period, although my almost-four-year-old son watches two days a week for about forty-five minutes or so, which I can live with.

Related Articles:
More TV time means worse school performance - May 8, 2007
'Genius' videos may hinder baby development: study - August 9, 2007
Kids shovel down more calories watching TV - February 22, 2007

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