A study released on Monday concluded that watching television neither hurts nor helps babies’ development, Reuters reported.
No correlation was noted between the amount of time children spent viewing television before they reached 2 years of age and their progress at age 3, according to a study of 872 children.
The report published in the journal Pediatrics showed that on average the children had watched nearly one hour of television per day at the age of 6 months and 1.4 hours a day by age 2.
Some 68 percent of babies fewer than 2 years of age view some sort of screen media like television or a computer on a typical day.
However, parents with children younger than 2 are advised to never let infants watch screen media, according to The American Academy of Pediatrics.
The researchers found that children living in homes with lower household income or whose mothers had less education were more likely to watch more TV. Non-white children also watched more.
Kids participating in the study were given vocabulary, drawing, object matching and pegboard tests to evaluate their verbal and motor skills at age 6 months and again at 3.
The results indicated that children who watched more television as infants performed less well on tests at age 3, but the effect disappeared after adjusting for the mother’s education, vocabulary, household income and other socioeconomic factors.
Marie Schmidt of Children’s Hospital Boston with colleagues from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care wrote: “Contrary to parents’ perceptions that TV viewing is beneficial to their children’s brain development, we found no evidence of cognitive benefit from watching TV during the first 2 years of life.”
Additional studies have also shown that television viewing had no impact on academic achievement among older children and adolescents as long as socioeconomic factors were taken into account.
However, a separate study did find that more TV viewing at age 3 correlated to less verbal ability at age 6, suggesting the detrimental effect may not show up until children are older than 3 and more verbal.
Or there may be more harm done by TV viewing between the ages of 2 and 3 years, the report suggested.
“TV exposure in infants has been associated with increased risk of obesity, attention problems, and decreased sleep quality,” said pediatrician Michael Rich.
“Parents need to understand that infants and toddlers do not learn or benefit in any way from viewing TV at an early age.”
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