Television: Is it Hurting or Helping Children's Education?

JESSICA COLE

Athens, Ga.-- Recent studies have shown that allowing children under the age of two to watch excessive amounts of television programming can be detrimental to their learning habits later in life, according to esciencenews.com.

On the site, a professor from the University of Washington, Dimitri A Christakis, has prepared an extensive review on the topic of children and television. In this report, Professor Christakis researched and found evidence for claims against TV programming and its overuse by children.

In a Thai study that was published in Acta Paediatrica in 2008, Christakis discovered that children who are under two years old and watch TV for two hours or more a day are more likely to obtain delayed language skills in later life. The study went even further, saying that toddlers between seven and 16 months old did not know as many words as children who did not grow up watching TV programming.

The review also pointed out that infants 14 months old or older learned better from real human interaction, rather than a program on a TV screen or computer screen. The study said even though children imitate what they on these programs, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are learning anything, or grasping any concepts.

So the question remains, are there any positive effects to viewing TV at a young age? And how much is too much?

Meghan Brown, a Senior at the University of Georgia majoring in psychology, isn’t as one sided.

“It depends on the amount of TV they watch. I would say it’s had an effect on my 11-year-old brother because we always stuck him in front of the TV,” she says, “He’s gotten used to watching TV and playing video games, and those have been a big influence in his life.”

Dr. Alison Alexander, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications, specializes in the study of children’s television and the effect it has on children. Through her research, she has found that Ms. Brown’s deduction of her brother wasn’t very far from the findings of Dr. Alexander’s studies.

“It’s really important to note that TV viewing isn’t so much harmful unless it is done in excess. It’s not good because children need diversity,” she says, “One question that is needed to be asked is ‘what is being replaced’?”

But when Ms. Brown asked whether or not she thinks she’s been affected personally by the media, her answer isn’t as assured.

“To a small degree, yes, I believe I’ve been affected by it [TV]. But I think I’ve been affected less than my brother,” she said. “I don’t remember what it was like when I was little. I remember going outside more than anything.”

The same question was asked to another student around the same age as Ms. Brown, Leslie Ring, a Senior accounting major at the University of Georgia.

When asked whether or not television effects children’s learning abilities, Ring said, “I don’t know, I think they get suckered into TV shows and then they don’t study.”

But when asked TV personally affecting her she explained she doesn’t think she’s been affected, though she points this toward, not the actual viewing of television, but the quality of the programming.

“Think about MTV,” she says, ‘When we [her generation] watched MTV it was music videos, when you watch it now, it’s just shows like the Real World, True Life, etc. These are all reality shows. I just don’t think growing up watching music videos affects you as much.”

The “Me vs. Them” problem, the idea that “they” are affected, but “I” am immune, is something that Dr. Alexander has witnessed first hand when she teaches her students, finding that what students initially thought about how kids view TV, was changed once they were given an assignment to actually observe a child watching television. “This romanticizing of the past isn’t unusual,” she says, “but in the future the answers are going to be much more complex than we initially thought.”