Too much TV for babies means less verbal interaction with Mum

May 7 2008

Over the last decade or so there has been mounting concern about the effect of television and videos on young children.

A huge increase in television programmes now available which are particularly aimed at young infants has occurred, despite warnings from experts that children younger than 2 years should not watch any television at all.

Along with the plethora of such programmes has come more and more evidence of the potential adverse effects of television exposure on young children.

Researchers in the U.S. are now saying because infants in low-income families are watching television or videos, with a supposedly 'educational' basis, their mothers rarely speak to them.

The study by researchers from New York University School of Medicine also suggests that the potential benefits from educational media may be limited.

Lead author Dr. Alan L. Mendelsohn says many of the programmes marketed as educational have limited data to support such claims and these claims were even less so if no co-viewing with a parent took place.

Dr. Mendelsohn and his colleagues set out to measure the verbal interaction between mother and infants associated with media exposure and maternal co-viewing; to do so they carried out an analysis of 154 low socio-economic status mothers-infant pairs who were taking part in a long-term study on early child development.

It was revealed that over one 24-hour period, 149 of 154 mothers reported that their 6-month-old infants had a total of 426 exposures to television or videos.

These included 139 exposures to educational programs for young children; 46 to non-educational programs for young children; 205 to programs for school-aged children, teenagers or adults; and 36 to unknown programs.

The researchers found that of those 426 television and video exposures, mothers talked to their infants during only 101 of them.

They say their findings support their hypothesis that interactions were most commonly reported in association with educational content, especially programs that had been co-viewed; however half of the exposures consisted of programs not intended for young children.

Even when they were intended for young children they did not involve frequent interactions when they were co-viewed.

The researchers say the findings are important, because parent-infant interactions are associated with long-term developmental-behavioural outcomes and they say verbal exchanges happen more often with reading and playing with toys.

The researchers say given the large amount of media exposure and low verbal interaction, more research is called for to determine whether such media exposure is of benefit to young children.

They say programs with educational content were no more likely to be co-viewed than were other programs and the research does not support the development of infant-directed educational programmes on the basis that they increase co-viewing and interaction.

The study is published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Internal Medicine.