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Everyone wants their kids to be as smart as they can be. That’s only natural. So when we hear about award winning CDs like Baby Eistein or TV programs like Sesame Street claim kids will become smarter if they listen to or watch these CDs or programs of course we’re interested. We all want to help our kids be the best they can be. But, 25 years of research may prove that we’ve been misguided by these claims. We may be doing more harm than good by having our babies and infants listen and watch these CDs and TV programs. That’s pretty scary.
In one of the most extensive reviews of its kind, the Seattle pediatrician (Dr. Dimitri Christakis ) says infant-aimed DVDs such as Baby Einstein, and even award-winning kids’ shows like Sesame Street, can do more harm than good to children under the age of 2.
In fact, the sensory overload of all those colours, sounds and sights – be it Big Bird or Baby Mozart – may be at least partly to blame for the tenfold increase in cases of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the past 20 years. It now affects between 5 and 20 per cent of American children.
Dr Christakis notes that nine out of 10 children under the age of two watch TV regularly. Some of these children spend up to 40 per cent of the daytime in front of the tube. Children as young as four months old are watching TV now and Dr. Christakis suggests that watching too much TV too early is “rewiring” these infants brains.
That’s pretty scary.
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5 Responses to “TV harms babies brains-that’s pretty scary.”
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Yes, frightening. Thanks for posting. It’s what we’ve all suspected…although I know I watched a lot of TV as a kid and I guess I turned out okay.
I think one of the big problems is that parents who rely on tv shows like baby einstein and others will have their kids watch it non-stop. It is very tempting to do because it will captivate kids and keep them out of trouble…but at the same time watching hours of tv isn’t good for anyone, let alone babies!
I read research by Jane Healy about 25 years ago when my own children were very young. She wrote of how children’s brains weren’t being wired properly as a result of too much exposure to TV. It scared me so much that my husband and I immediately curtailed TV in our house – no TV at all during the school week and limited exposure during the weekend. All my children have done well in school and they all are readers as young adults. This Baby Einstein stuff is dangerous and ought to be removed from the market for phony ad claims. The company ought to be charged with child endangerment. Yes I know that parents have the ultimate responsibility but this reminds me of the Nestle boycott days where people around the world boycotted Nestle products because of the results of marketing to third world parents: uneducated, unknowing people of the third world who thought they were doing their best for their child by feeding them with formula instead of breast milk, but ended up harming their child because they couldn’t afford to use the formula without diluting it. How many parents are using Baby Einstein because they are being drawn in by slick ads and think that they are doing the best for their child? How do we know which child will be harmed and which won’t? Maybe we start a boycott of Disney?
Sharon,
I remember boycotting Nestle products for the reasons you mentioned. I was a young mom at the time too and was horrified to think about the damage done to those babies whose mom’s diluted the formula because they didn’t know any better.
Chelle,
I’m with you when you say that watching too much TV isn’t good for anyone. I’ m kind of worried about how much time people, especially teenagers spend on- line. My students seem to spend hours and hours on-line.
Honestly this sounds more like a scare issue than anything else. Yes, if you plop your kid in front of a TV with no other interaction or stimulation there will be issues. But TV is not in and of itself harmful, in fact some studies have even shown that it can help children develop pattern recognition skills and expand their vocabulary.
This is another “Oh no, what has this generation come to?!” lament that will always happen every time a new technology is developed. Frankly I’m more annoyed with the alarmist parents and media group who amplify this junk science even further than the quacks that come up with it.