Toddlers, TV, and troubling behavior

Cognitive Daily reports that boys who watch violent children’s programming while toddlers (and we’re talking Disney here, not Texas Chainsaw Massacre) are four times as likely at age 7-9 to be in the top 10% of boys with behavioral problems.

…toddlers who are allowed to watch entertainment shows (as opposed to educational TV, and including violent shows) are significantly more likely to develop attention problems when they’re older.

But does violent TV have other impacts? In a separate study, the same researchers — Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman — took a look at the same 1997 survey results and a 2002 follow up of families with small children (330 kids in all). The kids were age 18 months to 5 years old in 1997. This time in addition to TV-watching, the researchers looked at parents’ reports of antisocial behavior of their kids when they were older. The parents rated their kids

Posted at 8am on Nov 14, 2008 | no comments
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