How Television Harms Young Children

Tara Ehlers

Childrens brains are an amazingly delicate part of the human make up. Those who interact
with young children - parents, caregivers, grandparents, siblings, and friends only want the
experiences that would be beneficial to the childs growing mind. Their minds are their thinking
tools and with their minds they have the potential to do many things in life. Television, a popular
pastime among children, harms the development of the young childs brain, especially for that of the
infant and toddler. Along with hindering the full potential of brain growth, it affects attention,
focus, language development, and future reading skills. Children having difficulty with attention and
focus is a large concern, because it directly relates to attention deficit disorder cases later on. It
is essential for those that interact with infants and toddlers, especially parents and caregivers, to
fully understand the negative effects that television incurs, for televisions presence is so wide
spread.
Television is an accepted and well-liked activity among parents as well as children. There is
a substantial increase of more early age viewers in recent years, specifically infants are the
fastest growing television market segment (Certain and Kahn; Thakkar and Garrison and
Christakis). It is noteworthy that [s]eventy percent of day-care centers use TV during a typical
day, and that one in four children age two and under has a TV in his or her bedroom (Center for
Screen-Time Awareness; Rideout 8). Apparently, infants and toddlers are spending many of their
waking hours in front of the set; in fact, it tops the most time spent on any activity for children in
their day besides sleeping (Endangered Minds 196). One study shows that 43% of all children two
and under are watching television every day and the average screen time for children under the age
of two is two hours and five minutes a day (Rideout and Vandewater and Wartella 8). Clearly, it is
necessary to find out if the numerous hours of screen time that most children are getting is
beneficial or harmful to them.
As adults, there are times when it is most relaxing to come home after a long and stressful
day of work, prop our feet up, and watch our favorite series of Lost or the newest Scrubs. One
may think there is no difference for a child to also do this. The child, hard at play through the day,
should be able to sit down, relax for a while, and watch Elmo or a Baby Einstein videoor should
they? What many people are not realizing is the critical age these infants and toddlers are at.
They are not adults with fully functioning brains. Infants and toddlers are still developing their
brains and forming who they are in relationship to the world. For the adult, tuning out the world by
watching a show is enjoyable, because we can forget our days problems, take a break from working,
and be entertained. For the child, tuning out is actually hindering their growing minds. Taking a
break for them is taking a break from essential growing time that happens in the first few years of
life. This is when the majority of rapid growth and change for the brain happens.
Humans are special in that, unlike animals, we are born with much development left to be
done after birth. Along with the infants bones melding, and the body growing considerably bigger
over their first few years of life, the brain is also growing. Jane Healy, who studies brain
development and the effects technology has on it, describes how the brain is making connections.
She says that the brain is not only growing in size, but in activity. The brain, by changing in
response to what it experiences, is called plastic during this time (Your Childs 7). Connections are

being made throughout the brain where neurons are talking to each other, forming synapses. The
more these synapses are being used, the stronger the connection and similarly, the connections that
are unused die off. Lise Eliot, who studies brain development of the first five years of life, says
[e]xperience, of course, accrues throughout life, but it is infinitely more potent in the earliest
months and years, when the synapses are still forming and the brain is at the height of its
plasticity (Eliot 392). Each child is forming a sort of map within their brain and this is all
happening through experience (Your Childs 7, 17, 19).
Healy talks further about experience. Experience, for the young child, is gained through his
senses. It is through touching, smelling, hearing, seeing and tasting that connections are rapidly
forming. Passive television watching does little for the senses. Healy says, Active interest and
mental effort by the child are major factors that make synapses form (Your Childs 19-20). The
types of experiences, along with how much and how often these experiences occur, will change how
many of these synapses there are within the brain. The more these connections are used, the
stronger and easier they flow, allowing the brain to work expertly. Although connections continue
to form through our lifetimes, it is readily happening in the first years of life, with the majority of
connections happening then. When a lot of activity takes place by synapse connections within
specific parts of the brain it is called a critical period. Critical periods happen in one area of the
brain in order to refine specific abilities (Your Childs 7, 17, 19, 20).
Critical periods, as written about by Lise Eliot, occur when basic sensory abilities, such as
hearing and language, are being set. Once these critical periods have passed, they are set within
the brain and there is no way to change the circuitry. These critical periods start early on and
some important ones, such as vision and hearing, end in the first few years of life. The child needs
to actively use those connections that are being wired in order for them to be set in the best
possible way. Parents who are tempted to overwork the TV set should remind themselves that
children need to be moving, exploring, and independently pushing the envelope on original problemsolving (Your Childs 36). Brain activity and learning happens when children use their senses and
interact with the world. The heavy amount of television viewing occurring among infants and
toddlers is not giving these children the amount of interactions with people and objects that is
most beneficial to their brains. Many misconceptions about stimulation arise because of the
knowledge that brain activity is needed to form these necessary connections between neurons. It
is, indeed, important to stimulate the brain in order for these connections, which we have the rest
of our lives, to form (Eliot 38-39).
What is not often talked about though is the damage of over stimulation. In our society we
are taught that more is better. The food industry and toy industry are just a couple of examples
that demonstrate more is better, and the television production does the same with maximizing the
most stimulation to grab viewer attention. For the young child though, more is not necessarily
better. Dr Dimitri Christakis, a prominent researcher on technology and children, says the best
evidence we have about television viewing among children under the age of three is that not only is
there no discernible benefit, it most likely will harm the child by overstimulating their brain at a
critical point in development (Seattle Childrens Hospital 2). Overstimulation is one thing television
does detrimentally to the brain.
In Jane Healys book, she discusses how overstimulation is created and what it does to the
brain. With its catchy colors and flashing images the makers of these programs, even those that
work for Sesame Street, have designed them to do just that. They have researched what catches
the eye the best and what it is in a program that keeps children focused on the show. The flashes
and zooming motions force the brain to pay attention by putting it into an alert state, the same

response that happens when there is danger. Normally when in danger, the body would respond with
this cue to the brain, but in the case of watching television the body does not need to react. It is
easy to see then why researchers contend that television viewing leads to over activity and this
over activity could lead to attention problems (Endangered Minds 199-200).
Unfocused, over-active children are the same ones that are being diagnosed with attention
deficit disorder. This is a large area of concern, considering that between 4% and 12% of children
in the United States are affected by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Christakis et al.
708). One study led by Dr. Christakis shows a link from television exposure among young children to
attention problems at age seven. Since experiences do account for influencing brain development, it
has led researchers to speculate that television viewing leads to ADHD. Research now indicates
that for every hour of television children watch each day, their risk of developing attention-related
problems later increases by ten percent. For example, if a child watches three hours of television
each day, the child would be thirty percent more likely to develop attention deficit disorder.
(Center for Screen-Time Awareness) Therefore efforts should be made to limit television time
during early formative years in order to reduce the risk of more cases of ADHD (Christakis et al.
708, 712).
Another detriment to the brain caused by television viewing is damage to vigilance, or the
ability to remain actively focused on a task (Endangered Minds 201). According to Dr. Jennings
Bryant, children that watch television and then do puzzles or reading are not able to stay focused
with what they are doing. Furthermore, he says this reduction in vigilance is especially critical
with relatively young children (Endangered Minds 201). It appears that even if the television has
been turned off, its negative effects are still being seen from the time it was on. Reducing focus is
another thing television does detrimentally to the brain (Endangered Minds 201).
Television is hurting childrens focus and attention; it is creating overstimulation and
stopping potential brain growth. It is easy to see why the American Academy of Pediatrics has put
out a recommendation in 1999 that children under two should not be watching any television and
those aged two and older are recommended no more than two hours a day (Certain and Kahn). If
television viewing is clearly not helping the growing mind, and it is recommended by the American
Academy of Pediatrics to limit or eliminate television from young childrens lives, what has made it
such a popular activity choice for parents?
Parents want the best for their children. More than ever, parents are thinking about their
childs future, their college, their potential, from day one. The claim that television shows and
videos make of being educational is an incredible pull to parents attention. According to the
Kaiser Family Foundation study, quoted in Time, parents said educational videos are very important
to childrens intellectual development (Paul 105). What is absolutely important are their childrens
futures, but are these educational shows truly the way to intellectual development?
The most prominent reason that parents allow their children to watch television is the
claim that many shows make - that they are educational. The educational value, however, is
debatable. When a parent approves a television show because it is educational, this could mean
several things. It could perhaps mean the shows will help develop their vocabulary, improve their
language, prepare them for school, or help with their reading skills.
In another study done by Dr. Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman they compared the
vocabulary of babies who watched DVDs and videos with those that did not watch the videos. The

babies that watched the videos learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words and scored
about 10% lower on language skills compared with the babies who did not watch the videos (Park 2).
Dr. Christakis further states that it is face to face interactions that are the most valuable when
the infant is trying to learn words and television does not provide this, no matter what its content.
Simply having the television on in the background also takes away from obtaining vocabulary.
According to Lise Eliot, the more noise and confusion a child has to sort through, the harder
the childs ability to focus, ultimately harming the childs language learning. She recommends
limiting the time television is on because it can be simply too much chaos, even if it on only in the
background. In order to provide the best early language assistance, it is necessary to look at the
quantity of language that the child is hearing. Eliot says that the quantity means the number of
words addressed to the child (Eliot 386). Even though television is providing many words for the
child to hear, it is not the right interactive language that the child most needs to enhance its
language skills or grow his vocabulary (Eliot 386, 448).
If parents are trying to prepare their child for school by using the educational shows, it is
shown that it actually does the opposite. One study shows that reading is strongly linked to scores
on verbal achievement tests, where as watching television is linked to lower cognitive test scores
(Hofferth and Sandberg 296). It appears that reading to children is much more beneficial than
watching television in preparation for test taking. Television is also not helping for learning phonics
later. Even good discrimination of soundsthe basis of phonicscomes from talking, not from
TV, which is mainly a visual experience for children (Your Childs 188). Talking with your child and
reading to them beats televisions attributes hands down.
Reading may be a better activity for a child than television, but does television, with all its
verbal messages, provide any help to children for their reading skills? This seems to be a fallacy as
well. In a study done by Zuckerman and Zuckerman, they find a correlation between television
viewing and decreased interest in reading and school activities (Zuckerman and Zuckerman).
Television takes less mental effort than reading, which is not strengthening the brain or helping
with reading skills. In fact, because children are watching more television in their free time and
spending less time reading for fun, it in turn hurts the potential development for more reading
skills. In a different study, it shows that children in households where the television is left on
always or most of the time are less likely to read, or even less likely to read at all (Rideout and
Vandewater and Wartella 9). Television is not helping with children in their interest to read or
their chances of them becoming regular readers.
Even with the research on reading skills and language development, there still might be a
pull to allow children, if nothing else, to at least watch these educational shows because of all the
claims they make. According to Michelle Garrison and Dimitri Christakis, who have researched the
educational programs, this seems to be the increasingly accepted solution, because the educational
videos are booming. The shows being created and sold claiming educational benefits, which target
infants and toddlers, are a fast growing category in the market. This is partly because these are
selling more than other licensed character videos that do not claim educational value. Simply put,
these videos sell because of the educational claims (Garrison and Christakis 13).
Garrison and Christakis did a study to explore the claims of the educational videos and the
degree to which they are scientifically shown to make a difference on childrens learning. Among

the videos looked at were Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby, Baby Genius, Elmo, and Dora the Explorer.
There are no government standards on labeling what is educational and under what guidelines.
Basically, these companies can claim whatever they like, without any proof. What is found is that
there has not been any research done to prove the validity for these educational claims. When
shows claim to be helping develop brain cognition, number skills, or any number of these such claims,
it is not backed up by any sort of evidence. Not only is there no evidence that baby videos do any
of the things the baby video industry claims they do, but these media actually appear to be
undermining the development of the very skills they claim to foster (Mothering Magazine). The
educational shows, without any evidence to back up that they are educational, are essentially the
same as all the other shows, hindering rather than helping the child. There is one other basic
reason that the television is used; Parents are working hard and trying to accomplish many things
within a day (Garrison and Christakis 6, 25).
Our lives are busy in this modern day and age. For many dual working parents there is not a
lot of time to spare. Few hours are left at the end of the day after a long day of work has been
finished, the children are picked up from day care, traffic is backed up along highway 270 for miles,
and there are no more frozen pizzas left in the freezer for a dinner that is yet to be made. It is
extremely easy to see how parents slip into the convenience of letting television help. Maybe there
is just a half an hour while dinner is being made, a half an hour while other siblings are being helped
with homework, a half an hour in the morning when the house is hectic with everyone getting ready
for work, or another half an hour while mom cleans the house. Not only is television a handy tool,
but it appears that this is a normal, appropriate way to raise children. The majority of items to buy
for a child such as clothing, toys, and any other item that a child might need have the shows
characters printed on them. It is difficult to even buy any name brand diaper on the market
without television characters being portrayed on them. This shows that television use is not only
acceptable, but an expected way to parent. It is also an accepted practice of many day cares,
increasing even more screen time for young children.
It is unquestionable that parents want what is best for their children. If television is
consistently what is offered, then what is best needs to be re-examined. Certainly it can be argued
that the content of certain shows are more child appropriate than others, but television viewing is
still time spent television viewing. The child, at best, is simply receiving an uncertain amount of
information via his eyes and ears in a passive way. More importantly, this is creating the potential
for loss of reading skills, leading to cases of ADHD, and hurting optimum growth of brain
development at a crucial age. In the absence of many hours of television, children could be
connecting even more neural pathways in their brains by interacting with their environment, focus
could be enhanced, great reading skills and a love of reading could result; or interactive, interesting
conversations with another human being could occur enriching language skills.

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