is tv making camden dumb?

the other day brian came across an article that talked about "new research" (i use quotations because not much is new on the topic and similarly, not much is actual research) regarding tv watching and infants. i've ranted about this topic before and will admit that this tv watching thing is a slippery slope.

i went from letting cam watch only 15 minutes of sesame street to having it on daily for a full episode while i cooked dinner, got ready for us to go out for the day or yes, i'll say it, cat napped on the couch near him!

what i've found is once i started to let camden watch sesame street, two things happened. 1) he asked to watch tv every day, multiple times a day. 2) i got lazy and let him watch more and more of it because it allowed me to do things on my own.

after brian mentioned that article to me i tried to find this "new research" to see what it was all about. this is the recent study people are writing articles and blogs about: Infant Media Exposure and Toddler Development from Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

it's a longitudinal study that tracked 259 babies from 6 months to 14 months. it measured how much tv, including three different content types, each child watched at 6 months then compared language and cognitive development at 14 months.

they found "lower cognitive and language development at age 14 months" for the babies exposed to media at 6 months.

now, at face value this sounds really bad. cue the gasps and screams of mommies who plopped their baby down in front of the tv while they did the dishes. but you have to dig a little deeper. the researchers, like may others, have a caveat in their conclusion that "further research is needed."

maybe what it really should say is better research is needed? now, i am no researcher. not at all. but even a non-researcher can do a little googling and find that to date, two main studies have been done on this topic.

the first is a study by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis out of UW that called out Baby Einstein videos for falsely stating that their programming makes babies smarter. it also goes on to assert that tv time not only delays language but might be interfering with "crucial wiring being laid down in their brains during early development." this TIME article sums it up nicely.

the second is a study by Marie Evans Schmidt from the Center on Media & Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston. She studied more than 800 youngsters from birth to 3 years, recording the time they spent watching television or dvds as reported by their mothers, as well as their performance on language and motor-skill tests. here's a recap of that study, also in TIME.

so what do these studies say? well, the first says the more tv a baby watches, the smaller his/her vocabulary is. it also begins to infer that tv actually changes the wiring in a young developing brain due to the fast-paced nature of tv editing and adds that this overstimulation could also contribute to ADHD in later years. now, the vocabulary thing is a given. it's been proven that the more words a child hears, the more words he knows. but the latter two claims are quite frightening. rewiring your child's brain?? it's possible since brain development is at its highest during the first 3 years or life and peaks when a child is 2. but their claim would need to be proven with real brain science research. and the claim about ADHD? i'm not sure how that can ever be proved. solid findings on that are decades away, i'm sure. but it definitely is something to think about.

the second study, to me, seems the most complete. it has controls for socioeconomic status and other home factors that showed tv viewing may not be associated with cognitive development. her study found that "tv viewing is an outgrowth of other characteristics of the home environment that lead to lower test scores."

so now back to this "new" study. all i can gather from it is that it really hasn't found anything new at all. especially when you factor in that the participants of the study were all mothers with low socioeconomic status so the findings could be much like Schmidt's.

but the bottom line that everyone can agree on is this: there is no BENEFIT to tv watching for children under 2.

so how has this changed camden's daily life? well, after mulling over all this the last few days, i have changed my tune a bit. today, i made a conscious effort to not let cam watch any tv. as a result, i played and talked to him more and he seemed to have more fun being at home with me. will i ban sesame street until he's 2? no. mommy does need a break at times and he sure does loves elmo as you can see from this video!



but i am climbing back up that hill and keeping my feet firmly on that slope. i won't be shouting, "the tv is evil!" from the top, but i also won't be sliding further and further down to the bottom.