Every hourly raise in daily TV viewing at 29 months of age is linked with diminished vocabulary and math skills, classroom engagement, victimization by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten, a study has claimed.
According to Professor Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital, this is the first time ever that a stringently controlled associational birth cohort study has looked at and found a relationship between too much toddler screen time and kindergarten risks for poor motor skills and psychosocial difficulties, such as victimization by classmates.
She said that these findings suggest the need for better parental awareness and compliance with existing viewing recommendations put forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Pagani explained that the AAP discourages watching television during infancy and recommends not more than two hours per day beyond age 2.
She said that it seemed as if every extra hour beyond that has a remarkably negative influence.
Pagani said 991 girls and 1006 boys in Quebec whose parents reported their television viewing behaviour as part of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development.
She said that the standard deviation is a commonly used statistic tool that tells us what is within a normal range compared to the average.
Pagani said that one standard deviation from the average daily amount of television viewed by thetoddlers in this sample (105 minutes) is 72 minutes.
She added that some of the kids who participated in the study were two or even three standard deviations away from the average, and their kindergarten indicators were correspondingly worse than those who were one standard deviation away.
