Your Baby Watching TV: Harmful Or Beneficial?
Is TV (and Video) really good for babies and infants under age 2? According to Dimitri Christakis of Children’s Hospital in Seattle and writer of the The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids, while older children can learn from educational shows, no study has shown that watching television and video are beneficial to babies. In fact, it can actually do harm with the following reasons given below…
1. He says, the first 2 years of your kid is a critical time for brain development. Watching TV steals time away from your kid’s exploring, interacting, playing with you and others, and actively learning by manipulating things around him. These are activities that help your kid develop the skills they need to grow intellectually, socially and emotionally.
2. When your kid plays, he is actively learning about how the world works. He wires his brain by experimenting with cause and effect. When your kid interacts with people, he meets his emotional milestones. TV keeps your kid away from these activities.
3. The first 2 years of your kid is also a critical time for learning language. Language is only learned through interaction with others, not by passive listening to TV. If you not respond to your kid’s attempt to communicate, your kid could miss this important milestone. Also, your kid will not learn to talk by listening to TV characters baby talk or talk down to him. Your kid learns to talk by mimicking adult language. He learns from the adults’ simplified but correctly pronounced speech.
4. Note that when your baby smiles at the TV, the TV does not smile back. This may affect him socially and psychologically.
5. Speech and language Dr. Sally Ward found that over the last 20 years, an increasing number of 9-month-old children are having trouble paying attention to voices when there is also background noise coming from the TV. This may affect their paying attention in class when they go to school.
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6. Also, when kids who watch TV go to school, they have to make a change from being primarily visual learners to listening learners. If a kid watches more TV than interact with the family, he will have a hard time making this transition, and his school learning will suffer.
7. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, found that children who watched television as babies are more likely to have shorter attention spans, problem concentrating and impulsiveness by age 7. He also states that although Attention Deficit Disorder is genetic, TV can also trigger this condition because TV rewires the baby’s brain. The still-developing brain adapts to TV’s fast pace and overstimulation.
8. Also, in his study, Christakis found that children who watched TV as babies are less able to recognize letters and numbers by the time they go to school. A 2005 University of Pennsylvania study found that watching Sesame Street before age 3 delayed a child’s ability to develop language skills. This may be because babies are wired to be active and not passive learners.
9. Many TV shows and videos geared to kids are actually teaching them the wrong things. They distort reality with their cartoonish and unnatural depiction of the world. Also, the pacing of these shows is fast and teaches the baby’s sponge-like brain to always expect fast-paced input. The real world, as they will soon find out, is much more boring and requires patience to adapt to.
READ ALSO: 8 Simple Ways to Develop Your Baby Through Play (Part Two)
10. Many other studies have found that long-term exposure to television diminishes children’s ability to communicate via reading and writing. It can also lead to attention and learning problems in the long term.
I disagree with this article, actually my kids learnt a lot of words&things from television. They were also able to identify characters . maybe it’s a case of different strokes for different shades.
I disagree. I think it should be moderate and balanced even with kids above 2.
this does not apply in all cases. i have seen so many children that starts talking with the helping of watching baby stations.
I disagree cus my 11mnth old is actually learnin fast frm cartons nd baby advert on tv,nd she sumtyms practice too,nd she cn actually mk sounds u wil be able to understnd
My first kid started watching tv at a very tender age and it hasn’t affected him wrongly in any way.
Well I don’t think it’s that bad…. I thought they learn from TV programmes
Hmmm..i don’t agree with this article because I know children under 2 years learn a lot of stuffs from watching tv
I don’t quite agree with this article…
Message.. It depend
Hmmmmm I totally dis agree with dis article, may be it depends on d type of programme they watch.
I don’t agree…children learn from TV programmes
It could be true to an extent..its a 50/50 thing.
To some extent is not good to expose kids to TV at an early but sometimes, it’s helpul cos my 6months old enjoys watching cartoon with his elder siblings always happy,jumping and clamping in his walker,by this gives me more time to attend to other things
Atimes is gud
I don’t agree
All I can say here is, there should be a balance in all we do in live. Too much of everything is actually bad.
There are actually some elements of trurh in dis article
My kids like tv shaaaa
Interesting research thou nt completely true bt tnx
Its not really applicable to all children..
Its depends how long they are allowed to watch TV
Don’t think so
Interesting
Well we all know too much of everything is bad but everybody not just kids pick things up very easily from d television.
Hmmmm ok
How about E-learning is it bad too
I disagree o