How Much TV Should Kids Be Allowed To Watch?

The issue of kids' exposure to TV doesn't throw off as many sparks as it used to. There is general agreement that a child's exposure to television of any type should be limited. There is also general agreement that we are completely ignoring this advice. I remember as a kid waiting every Sunday night for Walt Disney's "Wonderful World of Color" to come on, and loving it. I also remember my parents turning off the television when it was over. We don't do that anymore.

Americans two years of age and older now spend an average of four hours and 49 minutes per day in front of the TV -- 20 percent more than 10 years ago. And we are getting this exposure at younger and younger ages, made all the more complex because of the wide variety of digital screen time now available. In 2003, 77 percent of kids under six watched television every day. And children younger than two got two hours and five minutes of "screen time" with TVs and computers per day.

What effect might this have on our children's brains? It's not good news.

For decades we have known of the connection between hostile peer interactions and the amount of kids' exposure to television. The linkage used to be controversial (maybe aggressive people watch more TV than others), but we now see that it's an issue of our deferred-imitation abilities, coupled with a loss of impulse control. One personal example: When I was in kindergarten, my best friend and I were watching "The Three Stooges," a 1950s TV show. The program involved lots of physical comedy, including people sticking their fingers in other people's eyes. When the show was over, my friend fashioned his little fingers into a V, then quickly poked me in both eyes. I couldn't see anything for the next hour and was soon whisked to the emergency room. Diagnosis: scratched corneas and a torn eye muscle.

Other examples come from studies that looked at bullying, attentions spans and the ability to focus, and secondhand exposure to TV. Watch this video to find out the results:

Disturbing stuff. Since the first studies on television, researchers have discovered that not everything about TV is negative. The effect depends upon the content of the TV show, the age of the child, and perhaps even the child's genetics. Before age two, TV is best avoided completely. That includes videos that claim to be baby brain-boosters. (More on that, and video games, in my new book, "Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart, Happy Child from Zero to Five.")

After age five, the jury is out on this harsh verdict -- way out, in fact. Some television shows improve brain performance at this age. Not surprisingly, these shows tend to be the interactive types ("Dora the Explorer," good; "Barney and Friends," bad, according to certain studies). So, although the case is overwhelming that television exposure should be limited, TV cannot be painted with a monolithic brush.

Here are a few recommendations for TV viewing the data suggest:

1. Keep the TV off before the child turns two. I know this is tough to hear for parents who need a break. If you can't turn it off -- if you haven't created those social networks that can allow you a rest -- at least limit your child's exposure to TV. We live in the real world, after all, and an irritated, overextended parent can be just as harmful to a child's development as an annoying purple dinosaur.


2. After age two, help your children choose the shows (and other screen-based exposures) they will experience. Pay special attention to any media that allow intelligent interaction.


3. Watch the chosen TV show with your kids, interacting with the media, helping them to analyze and think critically about what they just experienced. And keep the TV out of the kids' room: Kids with their own TVs score an average of eight points lower on math and language-arts tests than those in households with TVs in the family room.

More parenting videos on brainrules.net detail key insights from the book, from how to deal with temper tantrums to the surprising way a "cookie test" can predict SAT scores.

How A Pair Of Cookies Can Help Predict Your Child's SAT Scores (VIDEO)

A healthy, well-adjusted preschooler sits down at a table in front of a giant, freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. It's not a kitchen table -- it's Walter Mischel's Stanford lab during the late 1960s. The smell is heavenly.

"You see this cookie?" Mischel says. "You can eat it right now if you want, but if you wait, you can have two of them. I have to go away for five minutes. If I return and you have not eaten anything, I will let you have both cookies. If you eat this one while I'm gone, the bargain is off and you don't get the second one. Do we have a deal?" The child nods. The researcher leaves. What does the child do?

Mischel has the most charming, funny films of children's reactions. They squirm in their seat. They turn their back to the cookie (or marshmallow or other assorted caloric confections, depending on the day). They sit on their hands. They close one eye, then both, then sneak a peek. We took a camera into a preschool to see what would happen for ourselves (watch The Cookie Test):



The children in Mischel's experiment are trying to get both cookies, but the going is tough. If the children are kindergartners, 72 percent cave in and gobble up the cookie. If they're in fourth grade, however, only 49 percent yield to the temptation. By sixth grade, the number is 38 percent, about half the rate of the preschoolers.

Welcome to the interesting world of impulse control. It is part of a suite of behaviors under the collective term "executive function." Executive function controls planning, foresight, problem solving, and goal setting. It engages many parts of the brain, including a short-term form of memory called working memory.

Mischel and his many colleagues discovered that a child's executive function is a critical component of intellectual prowess. We now know that it is actually a better predictor of academic success than I.Q. It's not a small difference, either: Mischel found that children who could delay gratification for 15 minutes scored 210 points higher on their SATs than children who lasted one minute.

A child's brain can be trained to enhance self-control and other aspects of executive function. But genes are undoubtedly involved. There seems to be an innate schedule of development, which explains why the cookie experiment shows a difference in scores between kindergartners and sixth graders. Some kids display the behaviors earlier, some later. Some struggle with it their entire lives. It's one more way every brain is wired differently. But children who are able to filter out distractions, the data show, do far better in school.

Learn more about why in my new book, "Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five." Watch more parenting videos at brainrules.net.

Authors@Google: John Medina Brain Rules for Baby

Watch John Medina's Authors@Google talk on Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five.