A new study says that an extra hour of television watching beyond recommendations set by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) diminishes a preschooler’s vocabulary and math skills as well as classroom attention.
The average American child watches three to four hours a day, despite the AAP recommendation that kids two and older watch no more than one to two hours daily and children under two watch no television at all.
The AAP maintains that video screen time provides no educational benefit for children under age two and leaves less room for activities that do, like interacting with other people and playing.
When the group endorsed this position at a Boston meeting in 2011 the software media industry took the position that it should be parents not the clinicians who decide how much screen time is appropriate. Essentially, industry places the responsibility on parents.
Short of pulling the plug what can parents do?
First of all, change how you think about TV. Quit watching television and start watching programs.
Use the listings to select what you and your children are going to watch.
Turn off the set when that program is over.
Think of it this way – having a television on is a distraction and when you are only two years old and trying to figure out how the world works you don’t really need any distractions.
T.V. has become the place where the pursuit
of happiness has become the pursuit of trivia
Where toothpaste and cars have become sex objects
Where imagination is sucked out of children
by a cathode ray nipple
T.V. is the only wet nurse
that would create a cripple
Television, Drug of the Nation
~ by the Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy