Study: Less TV Makes Kids Less Aggressive
C H I C A G O, Jan. 14 -- A school-based program that discourages television and video game use makes grade-school children less aggressive, a Stanford University study suggests.
While previous research has linked exposure to media violencewith increased aggression, few potential solutions have beenevaluated, the authors said.
Their findings indicate "that the effects of televised violencein kids are really reversible," said Dr. Thomas Robinson, the leadauthor and an assistant professor of pediatrics.
The study, published in the January edition of the Archives ofPediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, involved third- andfourth-grade children at two comparable public elementary schoolsin San Jose, Calif.
At one school, 120 participants received no intervention andserved as a control group. At the other, 105 children received 18lessons, 30 to 50 minutes long, over six months on reducing the useof television, videotapes and video games. Researchers trainedregular classroom teachers, who led the program.
Challenged to Abstain from TV
Children initially reported the amount of TV, videos and videogames they watched. They were challenged to abstain for 10 days,and then to watch no more than seven hours a week.
The households involved had their televisions hooked up to a devicethat could prevent the set from being turned on if the childexceeded a limit that parents were encouraged to establish.
At the outset, the youngsters reported an average of about 15½hours of television viewing weekly — five hours of viewingvideotapes and three hours of playing video games.
That fell by about one-third by the end of the program, to anaverage of about nine hours of television viewing, 3½ hours ofvideotapes and more than and hour of video games. Content of the programs andgames kids watched was not assessed, though the authors assumedsome were violent.
Children were asked to rate their classmates' aggressiveness atthe beginning of the study, in September 1996, and at the end, thefollowing April, identifying such things as who started fights oroften said "give me that!"
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