Doctors Recommend Against TV For Kids Under 2 210
An anonymous reader writes "The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a recommendation to parents that kids under the age of two should be limited in their time watching television and using computers. They say there's 'no such thing' as educational programming for kids that young, and that they benefit much more from real human interaction (PDF). Psychologist Georgene Troseth said, 'We know that some learning can take place from media, but it's a lot lower, and it takes a lot longer.' The article continues: 'Unlike school-age children, infants and toddlers "just have no idea what's going on" no matter how well done a video is, Dr. Troseth said. The new report strongly warns parents against putting a TV in a very young child's room and advises them to be mindful of how much their own use of media is distracting from playtime. In some surveys between 40 and 60 percent of households report having a TV on for much of the day — which distracts both children and adults, research suggests.'"
The AAP has always been extremely conservative (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn, I've been lettting my new baby watch TV (Score:1, Insightful)
I recommend against TV for children under 99.
You have the right idea but you're not thinking big enough.
... if you need somebody to explain this to you and impress you with how many Ph.Ds they have on their wall, you're a fucking idiot.
If you are a parent and you need a bunch of doctors to tell you that TV is not a good babysitter, that maybe "TV as babysitter" and designer diseases like "ADD" aren't really a coincidence, that if you weren't such a piss-poor parent you'd actually spend quality time with your young children and interact with them and stimulate their developing minds during their critical formative years
Such "parents" (not worthy of the name parent, should be called breeders sort of like cattle) should have their children taken away and should then be forcibly surgically sterilized. I'm tired of dealing with the now-adult offspring of negligent parents who saw their children as a line item on their daily schedules. They're idiots, they can't focus on anything, they can't even fucking look where they're walking, and they're so fucking helpless and lazy, constantly begging for some kind of handholding for things they should be more than capable of handling on their own. Don't even get me started on the trend of telling kids they're special and genius when they haven't actually achieved anything, and the loud-mouthed attention-starved narcissists they grow up to be.
Oh yeah, dumbass parents like this also wonder why their kids don't respect them. Hahaha. It will never occur to them to try actually being respectable. Nope, the problem must be the child, yeah, sure, naturally they had nothing to do with that...
the main problem with things like television (Score:3, Insightful)
it trains your mind to be led by something other than your mind itself.
so even if television wasnt full of violence and myriad sexual innuendis (which it is), but instead filled only with decent people doing decent things, it would still exert a tremendous and unquantifiable amount of damage to the normal healthy mental fitness of any human cognitive enough to interpret any part of its message at any basic level.
i hate to say it but technology has dehumanized humanity. many have seen it pervading the social fabric already, decades ago. they were ridiculed and derided by people much like myself until a few years ago when the evidence became too overwhelming for me to continue living a lie.
our society is now filled with people that cannot concentrate on anything important for too long, seldom dwell on any actually important topic, and have very little desire to muse on anything. we all want fast paced, lots of colors, quick shallow messages that can be digested without any heavy mental thought given.
i am reading a book right now that echos my feelings on this far better than i can articulate. it is called 'high tech heretic' by clifford stoll (better known for his non fiction book 'the cuckoos egg' when he tracked down hackers that were working for the kgb and were breaking into the vms / bsd box's at his university decades ago)
Re:This 1 year old doesn't understand printed imag (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As compared to... (Score:4, Insightful)
And why should they be allowed TV after age 2? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just wondering. TV isn't just bad for babies.
LIMIT being the keyword (Score:1, Insightful)
infants and toddlers "just have no idea what's going on" no matter how well done a video is
They can enjoy music, motion, colors, and even learn to understand what is going on. My first daughter watched https://www.babysigningtime.com/ [babysigningtime.com] from about 6 months (give or take a bit) and by 1 had a rather extensive signing vocabulary. At first she would watch 1 segment and gradually would watch one 30 minute episode (each episode had about 6 segments with a group of related signs in song format). The songs were catchy and the colors were flashy. Even if she was just sitting and playing and not paying full attention, I felt it was a fine musical background. Also, her watching was not always a solo activity. Many days, her and I would curl up together on the couch and watch the episode right before bed as a way to unwind. I was hoping http://www.yourbabycanread.com/ [yourbabycanread.com] would catch her attention too, but when she wanted a show on it was almost always Signing Time.
Most people will immediately take the knee-jerk reaction and think they can't let a child watch anything. Sure, if you let the television babysit your child for hours you will have issues. Like everything else in this world, there is a need for moderation and parental involvement. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with letting a child watch things like the previously mentioned shows, Sesame Street, Super Why, or Sid the Science Kid, so long as it is not being used as a substitute for parenting.
(I do not work for nor have any association with any of the aforementioned programming)
(Post based on empirical evidence, not a scientific study. Your mileage may vary. Perhaps my child turned out great DESPITE my efforts.)
Re:As compared to... (Score:5, Insightful)
You have obviously never had kids. You have NO idea how rowdy they start getting around dinner time.
Re:Damn, I've been lettting my new baby watch TV (Score:3, Insightful)
ADD is the logical consequence of doing everything ever faster. It is not caused by TV as such, but rather by the way the world has changed.
We used to have the middle ages, where everything significant done was thought over probaby 50 years at the very least.
Then we went from "water + green sparkly stone heats up" to nuclear power plants (with a detour to the bomb) in about 15 years.
Then things accelerated and technology advanced, so cost decreased to the point where 10 year planning was enough to travel to the moon.
We went from 1 baud to ~150 Tb/sec with roughly the same amount of minds behind it, in about 40 years, rising exponentially year-over-year.
Now things are accelerated to the point that we plan for a few hours, a few weeks, maybe a few months for the really, really big projects.
And "strangely" this results in a short attention span ... how is this a surprise ? How exactly do you think our brains would adapt ? It is physically impossible (in non-geological timespans) to get any smarter, so what was the brain to do ? The acceleration above happened in 500 years. The last 4 in less than 100 years. The last 2 in 30 years. ADD is only the beginning, it'll expand to the point that large amounts of people do not have sufficient attention span to get anything done at all, to the point where it can rightly be called a disease.
ADD is simply a result of how we've "chosen" to run the world (perhaps more accurately : how the dollar has chosen to run the world). It will get much worse than it is today. The shortening of attention spans and the lack of depth of thought is running along an exponential curve.
Re:Damn, I've been lettting my new baby watch TV (Score:5, Insightful)
ADD is the logical consequence of doing everything ever faster. It is not caused by TV as such, but rather by the way the world has changed.
We used to have the middle ages, where everything significant done was thought over probaby 50 years at the very least. Then we went from "water + green sparkly stone heats up" to nuclear power plants (with a detour to the bomb) in about 15 years. Then things accelerated and technology advanced, so cost decreased to the point where 10 year planning was enough to travel to the moon. We went from 1 baud to ~150 Tb/sec with roughly the same amount of minds behind it, in about 40 years, rising exponentially year-over-year. Now things are accelerated to the point that we plan for a few hours, a few weeks, maybe a few months for the really, really big projects.
And "strangely" this results in a short attention span ... how is this a surprise ? How exactly do you think our brains would adapt ? It is physically impossible (in non-geological timespans) to get any smarter, so what was the brain to do ? The acceleration above happened in 500 years. The last 4 in less than 100 years. The last 2 in 30 years. ADD is only the beginning, it'll expand to the point that large amounts of people do not have sufficient attention span to get anything done at all, to the point where it can rightly be called a disease.
ADD is simply a result of how we've "chosen" to run the world (perhaps more accurately : how the dollar has chosen to run the world). It will get much worse than it is today. The shortening of attention spans and the lack of depth of thought is running along an exponential curve.
How then do you explain those who can deal with the pace of modern life, including those who love and work frequently with technology and information, yet retain the ability to concentrate and focus and pay attention at will?
I have an entirely different theory. It's not a matter of something new that has recently appeared. It's a matter of something old that is no longer valued as it once was. The heightened pace of modern life merely increases the contrast, makes the nature of the problem more evident and observable. Without that, you'd have to look for it much harder before you would see it.
It's simply a matter of discipline mixed with expectation and most people grossly sell themselves short on both counts. The lack of depth is absolutely caused by the decline of personal introspection and self-evaluation, things which naturally lead to an internal embracing of the good and rewarding kind of discipline. This isn't the kind of discipline externally imposed by some authority. It is a desire to appreciate and to invest in things that are valuable and significant.
If you buy a car, you take good care of it and learn a little bit about how it works so you know how to do that. If you buy a computer, you pay attention to experienced users, you learn from your mistakes, and you do a little reading here and there so you can get the most out of it. All of that has now been shoved into the exclusive domain of experts. All of that is "too hard", which is code for "requires a small investment of effort that repeatedly pays off forever afterwards".
All of that is not passive enough, not comfortable enough for those who want to be served more than they want to help themselves. That kind of creative, relaxing "me time" would also mean you don't judge your social standing by how hectic and burn-out your schedule is, you make time for things you value more than you say "I just don't have the time". In short, that would make you a nobody, because if you were really somebody, you'd be drowning in appointments instead of bothering with things like working on your character and learning new things.
The only real change has been to what you might call a value system. The pace at which a given value system is applied is completely irrelevant.