The American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended that children under the age of 2 not watch TV. The AAP also recommended that caregivers place careful limits on older children’s TV viewing.

Many parents are also aware of a recent study led by Dr. Dimitri Christakis of the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Christakis and his research team found that the more a young child watches TV, the more likely they will develop attention deficits by school age. 

In addition to attention deficits, too much screen time has been linked to problems with communication and social skills. It has also been linked to obesity in kids, as well as aggressiveness and other mental health problems. Time in front of a screen also reduces the time available for pursuing other activities and developing potential talents and interests.

Studies continue to show that too much screen time can alter normal brain development in children. And yet, as their precious and delicate minds are developing, today’s children are spending more and more time in front of TVs, computers, held-held electronic games, and so on.

Before the TV and computer age, children were entertained by activities like reading and listening to stories and radio shows. Since they couldn’t see what was going on, kids had to create pictures in their own minds. They had to imagine what a character, place or event looked like. Unfortunately, today’s children don’t have to visualize on their own:  instead, they are spoon-fed professionally produced images on a screen.

The end result is that many video-age kids have a hard time creating pictures in their minds when away from a TV or computer. They also have trouble imagining and visualizing what they read or what they hear. This creates problems with reading and language comprehension, which has been repeatedly documented by Nanci Bell and her researchers at the Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes. The ability to visualize is also vital to abstract reasoning, analytical problem-solving, and creative thinking.

Equally worrisome is the effect of too much screen time on the development of attentional skills, as Dr. Christakis recently found. It appears that if kid’s developing brains are regularly exposed to fast-paced images, they will likely require a very high level of stimulation to concentrate and focus when away from a screen … like in a classroom. The bottom line is that no teacher can compete with the lightening-fast pace and immediate gratification of TV and computer games.

Children today are also spending less time developing and using their imaginations, as they are spending a significant amount of time in front of a screen. Though they may seem to be imaginative in their play, with a closer look, parents will likely find that their screen-immersed children are simply re-enacting something they’ve seen, that was created by someone else.

For more information, you may find the following publications helpful.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, N. Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking (2nd Edition). Nancibell, Inc., 1991.

Christakis, D.A., Zimmerman, F.J., DiGiuseppe, D.L. & McCarty, C.A. Early Television Exposure and subsequent attention problems in children. Pediatrics 113 (2004), 708-713.

Harvey, S. and Goudvis, A. Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding. Stenhouse Publishers, 2000.

Healy, J.M. Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think—and What We Can Do About It. Touchstone, 1990.

Healy, J.M. Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children’s Minds—and What We Can Do About It. Touchstone, 1999.

Jourdain, R. Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination. Avon Books, 1997.

Moody, K. Growing up on Television. Times Books, 1980.

Palladino, L.J. Dreamers, Discoverers  & Dynamos: How to Help the Child Who Is Bright, Bored, and Having Problems in School. Ballantine Books, 1999.