At one of our recent conferences, Tim Burns made the startling analogy that by age five, children watch as much television as it takes to get a four-year college degree. So it's as if we're giving our children a degree in television watching!
Now a study reported in a 2007 issue of Pediatrics found that those children who watched more television when they were 5 and 7 were more likely to show signs of difficulty paying attention at ages 13 and 15. This long-term study followed 1037 children and used assessments from parents, teachers and the youths themselves. It compared reports of attention difficulties in adolescence to the time parents said their children watched TV at ages 5, 7, 9 and 11. In addition, psychologists independently rated each child's attention span and ability to concentrate at ages 3 and 5.
Even after accounting for factors such as gender, cognitive ability, and socioeconomic status, the researchers in New Zealand found that those children who watched more than three hours per day between the ages of 5 and 11 had more symptoms of attention problems as teens than those who watched two hours or less.
--Reported in the Daily Camera, 9/25/07 from an article by Sandra G. Boodman of The Washington Post.
