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Washington (pte030/05.07.2005/13:51) - Over the decades, much research has been done about the negative effects of television watching and children. It has been linked to aggressive behaviour, earlier sexual activity, smoking, obesity, and poor school performance.
Some studies have found that the kind of TV programmes watched can have a positive effect. In three new studies, one from New Zealand and two from the US, the outcome shows, however, that the programmes children are actually watching do them no good in the gerneral sense.
Robert Hancox at the University of Otago in New Zealand http://www.otago.ac.nz/ and colleagues studied nearly 1000 children born in Dunedin, NZ, in 1972 and 1973. Data on how many hours a day were each spent watching TV at age 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 was collected from both parents and children. The participants were then re-evaluated at the age of 26.
Those who had watched the least TV, especially between the ages of 5 and 11 - were more likely to graduate from university by the age of 26, regardless of IQ or socioeconomic status. Those who watched the most TV - more than 3 hours per day - had the highest drop-out rate.
It was also found that kids at either extremes of the IQ scale were less affected by watching TV, while kids with a median IQ were more strongly affected.
Two other studies published in this month's issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine show similar findings.
Dina Borzekowski at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health http://commprojects.jhsph.edu/faculty/detail.cfm?id=84&Lastname=Borzekowski&Firstname=Dina%20L.G studied third grade kids from North California who were aged about 8. The kids who had TVs in their rooms watched more TV and didn't do as well on tests as those who had no bedroom TV.
In Seattle it was a similar story, found Frederick Zimmerman and Dimitri Christakis at the University of Washington in Seattle http://depts.washington.edu/hserv/faculty/bio.shtml?Zimmerman_Frederick . Children who performed badly on reading and maths tests were those who had watched the most TV before the age of three.
Educational programmes like Sesame Street, which are targeted at three-to-five year-olds proved to be a benefit for some kids.
However, all three studies found that, regardless of what programmes are watched by kids, the time spent in front of the box takes away time from creativity, reading or doing homework.
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