Three Studies on Children's Behaviors and Media Consumption

The questions continue to hang out there, like fog that won't dissipate: Do attention disorders have something to do with TV-watching at young ages? Is screen time making children fat? What happens to the social skills of preschoolers who watch a lot of television?

Almost weekly, a study appears in a medical or scientific journal to help us piece together what is really going on. The problem is, science is a bit-by-bit process, results are messy, and attempts to replicate results are even trickier. Here are three of the latest puzzle pieces to arrive on the scene:

Today, Pediatrics released a report that shows a relationship between behavior problems and heavy TV-watching (2 hours/day or more) at 2-and-a-half and 5-and-a-half years of age. But here's the good news: If children had been heavy TV users at age 2 but not at age 5, the effect went away.

(As an aside: At that age, kindergarten or pre-K programs take up a big part of the daily routine. In interviews I've conducted with middle-class parents, many have told me that the day is just too busy for much more than an hour of TV anyway.)

No link appeared between attention problems and heavy TV use at age 2-and-a-half. But having a TV in the bedroom at 5-and-a-half was associated with sleep problems and less emotional reactivity.

Note that the study didn't make any distinction between the types of TV shows watched. In other words, we don't know if they were violent, commercial-infused, adult-focused, children-oriented or educational programs.

Last month, also in Pediatrics, the question of attention-problems and TV-viewing got more focused treatment. That report is worth reading closely because it tries to answer what has been a confounding question left hanging by previous studies: Isn't it possible that children with attention problems had those problems before they ever were exposed to TV?

The authors, led by Carl Erik Landhuis at the University of Otago in New Zealand, found that when they controlled for attention problems in early childhood, they still found an effect of TV viewing by the time they were teenagers. This was based on 2 hours of TV-watching each weekday, which many define as heavy use, and was particularly robust among those who watched more than 3 hours a day in early childhood. The study made no mention, however, of what kinds of programs these children were watching. And we still have only an association -- a link -- that may be due to factors that are not directly TV-related. For example, could it be that TV is displacing too much of the run-around, outdoor playtime these children need?

The third study came out last week in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. It offered some of the first evidence that computer use in preschool children might be related to adiposity (roughly translated, how much fat is in a skinfold). Obesity and heavy-TV viewing was also connected, a finding that matches what has appeared in other studies of preschoolers. Getting at exactly what is causing the obesity -- is it just about the lack of exercise? could it the junk-food commercials? -- is a knot still to be untangled.