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Television hurts parent/child interaction

Posted on: Thursday, 24 September 2009, 11:17 CDT

More than one-third of infants and toddlers live with the television on most of the time and it may hinder parent/child interaction, U.S. researchers say.

University of Massachusetts researchers studied about 50 1-, 2- and 3-year-old children, each of whom was with one parent, at a university child study center.

For half of the one-hour session, parents and children were in a playroom without TV. For the other half-hour, parents chose an adult-directed program to watch, such as the syndicated TV game show Jeopardy!

The researchers observed how often parents and children talked with each other, how actively involved the parents were in their children's play, and whether parents and children responded to each other's questions and suggestions.

The study, published in the journal Child Development, found when the TV was on both the quantity and the quality of interaction between parents and children dropped -- parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children and the quality of the interaction declined, with parents less active, attentive and responsive to their youngsters.

Source: United Press International

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