Study: Too Many Younger Kids Watch TV

B O S T O N, April 30 -- The current generation of toddlers is already becoming the next crop of couch potatoes.

A study issued today by the Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati says 40 percent of 2-year-olds are watching a minimum of three hours of television a day.

And as many as 25 percent of 3-years-olds are also sitting in front of the television at least that much.

This is all in the face of the American Academy of Pediatrics' guidelines saying that kids under 2 shouldn't be watching TV at all and those between 2 and 5 should be strictly limited to two hours a day.

"These guidelines are not just for television," says Dr. Daniel Broughton, a pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a member of the pediatricians' group committee that devises such guidelines. "Young children should be limited in the total amount of time exposed to all media, including videos, video games, and the Internet, not just television."

These findings about the television viewing habits of young kids were presented today at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Baltimore, Md. The researchers surveyed 2,858 families nationwide.

Television Interferes With Learning

The problem for kids 2 years old and younger, says Broughton, is they are at a critical stage in their development in which they require interaction and stimulation to learn.

"Young kids want to interact with their environment," he says, "but television doesn't interact back. That can be very frustrating for young kids. Rather than actively participating in their surroundings, too much television teaches kids to sit back and passively receive what is being offered."

Youngest kids also cannot distinguish what is real from what isn't. "To them, television is just as real as anything else in their world, such as playing with a parent or a sibling," Broughton says. "They don't have the skills to interpret something they see on TV as being fantasy or make-believe."

While older kids ages 3 to 5 have a better understanding of what they see on TV, he says they don't necessarily realize that much of what they watch is designed to sell them products and a lifestyle.