We already knew that too much television watching was not good for the health of adults and teens and even young children, leading to a more sedentary lifestyle. Plus, it turns many of our brains into gelatin–how else could millions of Americans watch American Idol and The Bachelor?
But how about for your infant? You know, the pre-gelatin brain phase–before years of exposure to modern media, could TV really harm the littlest among us?
Well, recent research reported in the journal Pediatrics suggests that while it may not do immediate harm to infants and toddlers to watch the tube, it also doesn’t do anything to help them. So wait, you might say, what about those amazing Baby Einstein DVDs everyone raves about? Sorry, staring at the television in infancy is not associated with better verbal or motor skills at age 3, says these researchers from the Pediatrics study.
But does TV harm infants? This study doesn’t offer that conclusion. However, at least one research study, according to TIME Magazine, suggests that DVD watching by infants results in a reduced vocabulary–a whole 6-8 fewer words in their repertoire. Then again, when you are an infant–that could be anywhere from a 5% to a 50% reduction in vocabulary!
The upshot here is that no one is going to haul your baby away to foster care if you set him or her in front of the television while you read a book for 30 minutes or bake a cake, but if your goal is to make your child a genius, clever little DVDs are not the way to do it. Actually reading to and talking to your child is the only proven way to guarantee they will have a strong vocabulary and visual skills as they grow into a child.
Some things just have to be done the old fashioned way.
Summer Johnson, PhD