Cutting down on kids' TV time may relieve parents of their little ones' toy demands. New research suggests that the fewer commercials children see, the less materialistic they become.
For decades, there has been concern about the number of television ads American children are exposed to. Since the 1970s, the average number of commercials a child sees in a year has doubled, from about 20,000 to 40,000. And since half of ads geared toward children hawk toys, the situation is helping to drain parents' wallets.
It is not surprising that parents report that television is the most common source of children's purchase requests.
In the study, children who had had cut their TV viewing by about one-third had their toy demands fall. They were 70% less likely than children at the other school to have asked their parents for a toy in the previous week.These results are evidence for a causal effect of TV viewing on children's hunger for toys.
Journal of Developmental and Behavioral PediatricsIt is not surprising that parents report that television is the most common source of children's purchase requests.In the study, children who had had cut their TV viewing by about one-third had their toy demands fall. They were 70% less likely than children at the other school to have asked their parents for a toy in the previous week.These results are evidence for a causal effect of TV viewing on children's hunger for toys.
Watch TV and Go Into Debt
Dr. Schor from Harvard University wrote the book The Overspent American which provides some marvelous insights on television watching. She conducted a large-scale study of American spending and saving habits and correlated the results with other lifestyle factors.
She concluded that for every hour of television a person watches per week, the average American spends $200. Sitting in front of the television five extra hours a week (two sitcoms a night) raises your yearly spending by about $1000.
Indebtedness as an outgrowth of TV watching arises not so much from viewers repeated exposure to advertising, but from their attempts to emulate the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by fictional characters in soap operas and prime-time television dramas. The more television people watch the more they tend to believe that ordinary citizens have servants, limousines, and huge houses.
TV will show 24 year old waitresses with expansive lofts and exotic sports cars, not ratty one-room apartments and battered Geo Metros. In addition, folks who watch a lot of TV are more willing to go into debt in pursuit of what they believe is an accurate depiction of normal life. Consumers rack up heavy credit-card debt chasing the televised fantasy or in academic jargon "engage in competitive consumption for the purpose of image management."
Contrary to popular conceptions, Dr. Schor found a positive correlation with higher education and indebtedness. The further people have climbed up the educations ladder, the less likely the are to save money.
The heaviest shoppers are women with graduate degrees, which may be attributed to their heightened awareness of the trappings of social status.
Those most likely to live within their means and save money are the millionaires next door, folks with less formal education who have worked hard building their own businesses. Not surprisingly, the more successful people are with their own businesses the less time they have for watching TV.
Kids are by far the most voracious viewers, A report in a recent JAMA claims that children in the US watch 15,000 to 18,000 hours of television between he ages of 2 and 17 as compared to 12,000 hours of school.
Many medical studies have correlated excessive TV viewing with childhood obesity and adult depression. Certain crime statistics also correlate well with the market penetration of television, larceny and burglary both increased as a corresponding rate following TV's rise in popularity in the 1950s.
StereophileCOMMENT: We have to seriously restrict our TV viewing if we want are to ever have any hope of recapturing time for relationships and the important items of life.
Surgeon General Prescribes less TV
Citing epidemic obesity levels among US children, Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher called April 21 for parents to limit the amount of time their children spend watching television.
At a Washington press conference, Satcher and Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Shirley R. Watkins announced their support of National TV Turnoff Week, which runs from April 22 to 28. The campaign is run by TV-Free America, a nonprofit group that encourages Americans to reduce their TV viewing.
Studies by Nielsen Media Research show that the average American watches 3 hours and 43 minutes of television each day, which adds up to 56 days of nonstop TV per year.
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Heavy Television Viewing Linked to Trauma Symptoms, Violence Among Children
Children who view as little as 3 hours of television per day could be at risk of behavioral problems, depression and increased aggression. And children at highest risk for these three factors tend to be classified as heavy television viewers.
Children who reported watching greater amounts of television per day (more than 6 hours) had significantly higher total trauma symptom scores than children who reported watching less than 5 hours of television per day. Two thirds of the students reported watching at least 3 hours of television daily; more than one third watched 5 or more hours of television per day and approximately one fifth watched at least 6 hours per day.
Dr. Singer also said in an interview that 70% of the children surveyed had access to cable or satellite television, regardless of whether or not they lived in rural or urban areas. Studies have shown that cable TV carries shows with very violent content.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 1998;37:1041-1048.
TV Viewing Tied to Child Injury Risk
Children who watch a lot of television are more likely to sustain injuries than those who watch less TV. For every hour of TV viewed per day, the risk of injury rose by about 34% in the children studied. And the researchers found that children who watched 4 hours of TV a day -- the average for American kids -- were more than four times more likely to be injured than children who watched no television. Paradoxically, a child who spends more time watching television and devotes fewer hours to potentially more dangerous physical activities and games is at greater risk of experiencing events that cause physical injuries.
Why might TV-watching increase the odds of injuries among children? Television shows often distort reality. In TV cartoons, characters get run over by trains, and are up and running in the next frame. In action adventure shows, heroes jump from rooftop to rooftop without a slip. By distorting the consequences of risk-taking, television may encourage it. A previous study showed that by age 70, the average child today will have spent between 7 and 10 years of his or her life watching television.
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
TV Watching, Childhood Obesity Linked
A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, along with experts at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, concludes that a child's weight increases with the number of hours he or she spends watching television each day. These experts are calling a US "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Many US children watch a great deal of television and are inadequately vigorously active.
The researchers discovered that 20% of US children partake in two or fewer bouts of vigorous activity per week. (Health experts currently recommend at least three periods of strenuous exercise per week). The problem stems from the fact that watching television is a sedentary activity -- but it's much more than that. Children are watching TV, many times eating high-calorie/high-fat snack foods, and watching commercials for fast food, all of which may encourage more eating.
The study also showed that 26% of US children watched 4 or more hours of television per day. Experts already label television viewing as the number one leisure-time activity of most school-age children. The study's authors point out that the average high school graduate will likely spend 15,000 to 18,000 hours in front of a television but only 12,000 hours in school.
As television viewing time rises, time spent exercising outdoors declines, especially among girls. A decrease in physical activity seems to occur as girls move from the 11- to 13-year age group to the 14- to 16-year age group. African-American and Mexican-American children had lower rates of exercise, and higher rates of television viewing, compared with their white peers. The researchers found that 48% of black children watched 4 or more hours of television per day -- nearly double the national average.
The Journal of the American Medical Association
Pediatricians: Television Unhealthy For Young Minds
The next time you take your kids to the doctor, you may be asked how much television they watch.Their "media history" will be examined as part of the American Academy of Pediatricians' (AAP) program to counter TV and other media's adverse effects on children's health. And the first step for doctors is to determine just how much TV, movie, video game and music content are being absorbed by their patients' pliant young brains.
The media history includes a wide range of questions on content, supervision and behaviors, including: The academy, which spent two years developing the policy, suggested in 1990 that children be limited to one to two hours of "quality'' programming a day. In 1997, the AAP launched a campaign to educate pediatricians on the influences television can have on children.
Groups including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Institute of Mental Health have linked aggressiveness in older children to violence in movies and television in several studies.
- "Do you watch TV with your child or know what your child is watching?"
- "Do you allow your child to eat meals or snacks while watching TV?"
- "Have you talked to your child about [music] lyrics you object to?"
"Do you have any specific concerns about your child's own sense of body image or sexuality, [or] your child's displays of aggressive behavior or use of foul language?"
The ill effects of too much Power Rangers or Dawson's Creek for young kids fall into two categories, experts say. Forgoing physical activity and social interaction by basking in the blue glow can lead to obesity, depression and poor school performance. But even more troubling, experts say, is the tendency for children to emulate fictional characters whose behavior translates to real-world health risks.
There's clearly a link between viewing violent television and more aggressive behaviors. It doesn't stop there: Eating disorders, smoking and drug and alcohol abuse have all been cited as behaviors encouraged by certain movies and television shows.
And then there's sex. The AAP notes that the average young viewer is exposed to more than 14,000 sexual references each year, yet only a handful of shows provide an accurate portrayal of responsible sexual behavior or accurate information about birth control, abstinence or the risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Under the new AAP guidelines, pediatricians are to advise parents to screen what their children watch, to view programs with their kids, and to discuss issues as they come up. The guidelines also strongly advise parents to ban television for children under two, who have a critical need for direct interactions for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional and cognitive skills.
Pediatrics
Expert Warns of More TV-Linked Seizures
One expert believes more cases of TV-induced epileptic seizures, like those experienced by hundreds of Japanese youngsters last autumn, are inevitable unless governments implement more rigorous broadcasting standards. While either high-speed flashes of light or rapid color changes are thought able to induce seizures in vulnerable individuals, researchers discovered that color was the culprit behind the Japanese seizures.
Among susceptible individuals, rapidly changing stimuli can play havoc with the special cells in the retina called rods and cones that help the eye transmit visual information to the brain. Certain frequencies are known to raise the likelihood of seizure among certain susceptible individuals. After a similar incident occurred during the 1993 airing of a British television commercial, state regulators imposed a series of preventive guidelines on all programming broadcast in the United Kingdom. Similar safeguards were not in place during the Japanese seizure outbreak, and do not currently exist in North America or on the European continent.
Nature Medicine
20 Activities to do With Your Kids Other Than Watch TV
Almost half of U.S. kids spend at least two hours a day watching TV. While this may sound harmless enough, numerous studies have come out showing that TV is definitely taking its toll on American children.
For instance, a study in the April 2004 journal Pediatrics found that every added hour of watching TV increased a child's odds of having attention problems at age 7 by about 10 percent. Those who watched for three hours a day between the ages of 1 and 3 were 30 percent more likely to have attention trouble at age 7 than those viewing no TV.
The notion that kids watch far too much TV is a no-brainer, literally. My strong recommendation is to minimize TV watching to no more than a few hours per WEEK, as a short attention span is only the beginning of the problem with TV. Here are some of the other negatives of kids watching TV:
- TV will change your child's views and food choices
- TV will make your kids fat
- Make your kids more materialistic
- Cause your children to go into more debt as adults
- TV will cause your children to be more aggressive
- May lead to smoking
- Will increase your child's risk of becoming seriously injured
Although you may be accustomed to turning on the TV to entertain your kids (or yourself), there are many other options out there. Here are 20 to get you started.
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