The Stupid News with Yankee Pete
HAVING A TV ON RUINS YOUR INTERACTION WITH YOUR KIDS . . . AND IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER WHETHER THEY'RE WATCHING IT
Friday September 18th, 2009
The fat, lazy American slumped on a couch in front of the TV has become a cliché. Because it's true. But I'm not going to bore you with more statistics about obesity, or how much TV we watch. But what if TV is destroying us even when we're not watching it?
A team at the University of Massachusetts recently looked at how parents interact with their kids when the TV is on, and the results are in the current issue of a journal called "Child Development".
The study looked at 50 kids, ages one to three, and how they interacted with a parent, both when a TV in the room was on, and when the parent chose something on TV to watch.
The idea was to see how much verbal interaction there was between parents and their kids, whether they responded to each other, and whether parents were actively involved in their children's play. All the stuff that's important for child development.
According to the results, having the TV on decreased the quality of the interaction: Parents spent about 20% LESS time talking to their children, and were less active, attentive, and responsive to their kids when the TV was on.
In other words, more TV brings less child-parent interaction. But we knew that. It's just that in this case, it's not the KIDS who are watching the TV, it's the PARENTS.
Why is it a problem? Because more than a THIRD of all infants and toddlers in America live in a home where the TV is on ALL the time . . . whether anyone is watching it or not. (Health Day News)
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