Exposure to Media Damages Children’s Long-Term Health
December 3rd, 2008Becky and I don’t have a TV, so what we’re doing with Owen is letting him see that there’s a TV at his grandparents’ house. The TV will be turned on for a few minutes with him in the room, and then we turn it off.
We don’t want him to watch TV, but we also don’t want him to think of TV as some kind of otherworldly fascination either.
We’re not sure how we’re going to handle it in the future. Maybe, once a week, the whole family will get to watch National Geographic or some such thing over at his Grandparent’s house. But at home, we’ll read books/play games/draw pictures/etc. instead.
Maybe some of you are homeschooling your kids. What’s your TV policy? If any. Maybe it’s take the thing out back and use it for target practice.
Refined sugar, however, is a different story. No refined sugar. None at all. If this sounds nuts to you, don’t worry. I didn’t have any at all until I was seven years old and look how I turned out! HAHAH Up until then, “candy” to me was carob and dried fruit, etc. I do remember the day that my mom let me begin using the real shit. M&Ms. Woh.
Via: Ecochildsplay:
“This review is the first ever comprehensive evaluation of the many ways that media impacts children’s physical health. The results clearly show that there is a strong correlation between media exposure and long-term negative health effects to children. This study provides an important jumping-off point for future research that should explore both the effects of traditional media content and that of digital media –– such as video games, the Internet, and cell phones –– which kids are using today with more frequency.” – Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., National Institutes of Health
Seven different health outcomes were analyzed: attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADDH), obesity, low academic achievement, tobacco use, drug use, alcohol use, and sexual behavior.
Studies on all types of media (including television, movies, internet, video games, magazines and music) were searched for, but most of the quality studies found involved television, movies and music. Fewer studies were available that examined the impact of internet and video games, and there were no studies found on the impact of cell phones.
The strongest connection was found between the amount of TV watching and childhood obesity:
* 86% of these studies found a statistically significant relationship between increased media exposure and an increase in childhood obesity.
* 82% of studies concluded that more hours of media predicted increased weight over time.
* A longitudinal study of 5,493 children reported that those who spent more than eight hours watching TV per week at age three were significantly more likely to be obese at age seven.
That quote is from Rep. Rahm Emanuel’s brother.
I think internet usage is a big wildcard. Some can get sucked into it, and there can be a wide variance in productivity of that time spent.
My home is also without a television, though we have two computers and a projector that we use to screen certain documentaries and specifically chosen media our young son can watch (he’s 11 months). Once every week or two my wife and I will sit down with our son and let him engage his attention in the images and sounds of our chosen media. The exposure to real life people is very stimulating for his young mind, he lasts about half an hour before his attention wanes. In this way the appeal of moving images is not foreign or ‘otherworldy’ to him.
We intend to teach him, if the need arises, that television is a form of control. It should be obvious to him that the world of television is the antithesis of the life we live at home. And when he is old enough and with friends he will have to make decisions based upon this contrast.
In any case the world in the years to come may differ greatly from the world we currently know, so issues such as these may have much less traction.
We have two girls, (6 and 3 y.o.). We have a TV but it’s not connected to an aerial. We let the kids watch videos that we have screened and tend to limit it to about half an hour a day max. I can’t remember now where we got the info but we did read something that made us decide that was a reasonable limit. Some days they don’t watch anything, by their own choice, and I don’t think our oldest could sit still long enough to watch much TV anyway.
The main reason we control what they watch is that a lot of stuff is just too freaky for them – we screwed up the other day and our littlest got very upset from watching Bambi of all things!
I think one of the reasons little kids watch a lot of TV is that they’re tired after spending all day at school, it was noticeable that our daughter’s friends from pre-school days were too tired for socialising in the afternoons after they started going to school and we tend to think that TV won’t be such a big deal with homeschooled kids.
Another reason is that homeschooled kids have more initiative. Another example; a friend of our daughter’s (who has only been at school for a few months) came around one Saturday and she spent most of the day asking us what she should do next, whereas our 6 yo always has various projects on the go and no shortage of things she wants to do.
In short, excessive TV watching has not been a big issue for us to date.
If it did become an issue we would be wanting to handle it very carefully, it’s already obvious to us the damage that hardline restrictions can have on our children and also on our relationship with them.
Although our culture tends to accord children less rights that prisoners we’re trying to take a different approach – originally for reasons of principal (we presumed it to be damaging to their developing personality) but now, in practice it’s for reasons of compassion (it hurts to watch the damage occurring). As an example we recently we gave both kids a huge bag of lollies because the fighting over, and pining for, lollies was getting out of hand. The end result, our youngest scoffed the lot in 24 hours and hasn’t asked for any every since. It wasn’t such an issue for our oldest.
One thing that you may have to deal with at some stage is excessive computer usage and on-line gaming. People we know have boys who spend a lot of time doing this – they take the approach that if they’re being true to letting the child make as much of their own decisions as possible that they shouldn’t police it but I have to admit to feeling uncomfortable with it. A thing to watch out for here for me (and other parents) however, is that it’s mostly my own value judgement about computer games that causes my misgivings here.
I think one solution to the whole media thing is to get kids involved in making their own TV. Our two made their own videos and put them on DVD’s for my wife’s birthday recently. It was just raw footage of them dancing and I did all the tricky stuff but they will get more involved as time goes on. Eventually they will have the same experiences I have had of selecting raw footage to create their own point-of-view and then they’ll be seeing it in the media all the time.
One of the best things we ever did when they were babies was to throw footage of them and other baby-friends together on a half hour tape and they absolutely loved it – never mind all this educational-baby-video nonsense, they found footage of themselves completely riveting!
And then there’s the tinfoil, woowoo reason for avoiding TV — it’s an Illuminati “Perfect Mindcontrol Device”:
http://www.geocities.com/cut2thechase_ca/svali-01.htm#part_15
We have 4 children, ranging in ages from 5 to 12 years whom we homeschool. My husband and I have always loathed broadcast television. I have never understood how anyone has time to watch it.
After some disagreement, we do own one now, but its use is strictly controlled: we use it to watch movies (mostly from the grand old days of hollywood, or indie stuff) or to watch classes from The Learning Company.
I agree with Aaron, I also believe that the computer has superceded the idiot box in terms of total time wasted…technology moving forward and all that. I have read studies on this subject, and most find that the exposure is psychotropic in effect, although none would hazard any guesses as to how much was too much, or if the effect were permananent or not. It worries me, not so much for my kids as for myself: when I am forced to take a break from the internet for whatever reason, I definitely suffer a feeling of extreme disconnectedness … maybe it’s really withdrawal.
Computers and the Internet represent a different challenge than TV. I’ve put more thought into how I’ll manage the computer use. It will be like Aaron’s TV-not-connected-to-an-aerial strategy: Computer not connected to the Internet.
When I was young, there was no Internet. There was a text based command line. No GUI. No Internet with endless distractions. I had years of fun and learning with things like BASIC and Logo.
So, he’ll have a computer, but time on the Internet will be locked down, like the guns and the chainsaw. Maybe, if he’s working on learning HTML, or something, I’ll whitelist some HTML reference sites.
I can already hear it, “But dad, why do you get to use a GUI and do whatever you want on the intertubes?”
“Because I’m old and infirm and learning BASH is good for you.”
Maybe I’ll have to eat my own dog food and go back to the command line with Owen.
No video games. Well, no shooters/multiplayers anyway. I don’t think my parents had any idea of how much time I wasted playing video games because they weren’t necessarily buying them for me… (Don’t ask.) Did video games enhance my life at all? Well, I tend to think that they were more of a waste of time than anything else. And those were the days when video games were low res blocks that you had to enhance with your own imagination to make them entertaining. It was nothing like the holodeck/audio-visual crackpipe nature of modern games.
Adventure games are probably pretty good and worth playing. There’s much more frontal lobe activity involved with them. Maybe the all text Zork style ones…
I sure hope my sister doesn’t come to Cryptogon and read my posts here. But nephew Sean who is 25 is a perfect example of why you should NOT expose a child at a young age to the toys of technological contact. Sorry, the kid is “Lost in Space (that’s an old Tv program I watched as a kid).”
@Dagobaz I totally relate to the feeling of extreme disconnectedness – sheesh- when I saw Crytogon on December 1 for more than a few times visiting the site I was about to start biting on some nails of the metal type. I really do need to read some SANITY in my day to day life and when my source goes down. Aw geez I’m probably going to go insane when all of our toys are taken away. WAAAW.
Anyways, my nephew is a genius. Never to be denied anything and never said NO to he was given computer access at an early age. He made something like $5K selling his “creature” on some video game. Now he can’t leave his house (that his parents bought for him) because he’s lost in a lost world. Long story, but the guy could probably build the next generation vehicle but he is so phobic about earning the credentials to do so that it is beyond my ken that a person could become so wrapped up in a womb of internet access.
I should talk. Hah. Cryptogon is my social life. If it weren’t for all the funerals I’ve been going to lately and having to go to my day job I’d be just like my nephew.
I’m looking forward (somehow) to the time when my Internet access is limited and has boundaries set up for me. Otherwise, I’m wrapped around the axel and couldn’t do much else. No kidding.
I love the DVD, never turn the TV on except on weekends when with Mom where, my god, the commercials could just drive a person INSANE.
@Pookie CBS Sunday Morning is just one long commercial about DRUGS that will make you blind. Seriously, its laughable. The drug company advertisements basically tell you that you will suffer so many side effects from the drug that is supposed to cure your condition that it makes no sense. The Illumanti of Big Pharma, they’ve got Sunday Mornings locked up.
I wish I could throw the TV out. SOB.
But somehow just that simple jolt of watching TV on only the weekends sets me freefor the rest of the week.
I don’t know what I would do if I had kids. Maybe they would only be allowed weekends too. Tee Hee
@pookie
That’s some scary shit you posted. God almighty.
I thought i got detoxed from the mind control set upon me in my life but I guess I only hit the tip of the iceburg.
I’m going to go dig out some of my John Rappoport classes and seek out a pyschic shower in some green fields of sunshine and blue skies and cold running water and clean my self off.
Lots of slime is stuck to me. I want it off. Like 20 years ago. YEIUCK.