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  • THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 6 2007 7:00 AM

Kill Your Television (It's Official This Time)

Submitted by _DictionaryGirl_

Edited by erin_broadley



When applied in a sufficiently awesome and innovative way, science is one of my favorite things. Not entirely unlike raindrops on roses or LOLzes on kittens.(1) Thusly, perhaps you can appreciate as I did all of the important, painstaking, and dedicated work and effort behind a study done at the University of Otago, the results of which were released in Pediatrics magazine this past Tuesday. In this groundbreaking research, scientists at the university definitively linked, for the first time ever, excessive childhood television viewing with later results that are truly shocking: increased attention problems later in adolescence.

Children who watch a lot of television are more likely to have attention problems when they are teenagers, according to a new study by University of Otago researchers.



No. Way. At first I thought Otago's press release might really be a cleverly-disguised Shop-Vac set on reverse, because that's how much my mind was utterly blown.

Seriously though, my initial reaction was one of "What, did they just now get television in New Zealand?" but the whole reason that this study has hit the presses to begin with is that it's the "first in the world to investigate a possible long-term link between television viewing in childhood and attention problems in adolescence." That fact alone, in and of itself, is probably the most surprising part of the whole shebang. Sure, the exciting world of cathode-ray entertainment was only brought to the masses a little under three-quarters of a century ago, which I guess is not a lot of time for studies in the grand scientific scheme of things, but let's take a look at some other things that found wild popularity during the 1940s:

  • McDonalds
  • Spam
  • Kraft American Cheese
  • The Holocaust
  • Perry Como



It would probably be easier to just plaster a warning label on the entirety of the World War II era as hazardous to our collective mental and physical health and be done with it. There's no scientific method in that, however, and therefore there must be studies. To be perfectly fair, this one started in the 1970s (when television was still shiny and new and full of mystery), meaning that when I said "painstaking and dedicated," I meant it.

The study has followed more than 1000 children born in Dunedin in 1972-1973. The time they spent watching television was recorded every two years between the ages of five and 11.

Otago researcher and paper co-author Erik Landhuis says that those who watched the most television had more difficulty paying attention when they were teenagers. The attention problems were reported by their parents, teachers and the participants themselves.

[...] The researchers found that those who watched more than two hours - and particularly those who watched more that three hours - of television per day during childhood had above-average symptoms of attention problems in adolescence. Symptoms included short attention span, poor concentration and being easily distracted. These findings could not be explained by early-life attention difficulties, socio-economic factors or intelligence. Even after all of these factors were taken into account, watching more television was associated with teenage attention problems.



As for the "important" part, I suppose that the real question now isn't so much what sort of damage does television do, but why: is it the constant sensory overload of lit-up pixels, like staring into millions of little light bulbs? Or is lack thereof, the unshakable sense of boredom that comes from interacting with no one and transfixed by nothing in particular, clicking through channels at a mile a minute in an incessant search for something ever more entertaining? At any rate, I should probably call my mother to let her know about this study. It ought to be nice to have the official backing of science after shouting the same theory since time immemorial.


(1): _DictionaryGirl_ just spent three hours watching The Sound of Music on television, and it seems to have made her a little bit daft.

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Comments
Chainlink

Chainlink

Key West, FL
August 2005

SEP 06, 2007 07:03 AM

My television died like ten years ago. frown

Sometimes, on holidays or when I'm feeling sad, I go and leave flowers on it's grave.

One episode of Nancy Grace killed my TV. Don't let it happen to yours !!! Save your TV from evil !

KingHELL

kinghell

Portland, OR
July 2003

SEP 06, 2007 07:06 AM

So, wait, I'm confused. Are we supposed to take television away from our children, or are we supposed to be angry at the people who want to take television away from our children?

Uncognitive

Uncognitive

Brooklyn, NY
May 2003

SEP 06, 2007 07:06 AM

Children who watch a lot of television are more likely to have attention problems when they are teenagers, according to a new study by University of Otago researchers.



Hey, I watched a shit-ton of television when I was a kid in the 70's, and it hasn't shortened my attention...

...hey, that paperclip sure is shiny...

...wait, what was I saying?

Azadeth

Azadeth

Fairport, NY
August 2006

SEP 06, 2007 07:17 AM

It's ultimately important to actually prove "what everybody knows." If it's never proven, then what everybody knows may be wrong.

The Reagan Administration tried to prove that pornography was harmful. Everybody knew it was true, but as it turned out, the results didn't agree.

Quirky

Quirky

Birmingham, AL
October 2005

SEP 06, 2007 07:42 AM

Otago?

Evilgasm

Evilgasm

Netherlands
April 2007

SEP 06, 2007 07:48 AM


I suppose the real question isn't so much what sort of damage does television do, but why:



My bet is on the fact that you can't interact with television. With TV you just sit back, switch your brain into neutral, and absorb whatever information (or lack there off) is being broadcast at you. When you get away from the "tube" and interact with real people you need to actually use your brain to understand what they are saying and formulate a reaction. While five to 11 year olds won't be holding many scientific discussions, the conversations they do have are basically "brain training" for their later lives.

_DictionaryGirl_

_DictionaryGirl_

NEWSWIRE

San Diego, CA

SEP 06, 2007 07:50 AM

KingHELL said:
So, wait, I'm confused. Are we supposed to take television away from our children, or are we supposed to be angry at the people who want to take television away from our children?



I think we're supposed to be responsible parents by staying informed about what our kids are watching (hopefully in a non-douchebag-moral-majority way) and not letting them watch ten hours of it a day.

As it relates to that, I should think that any of those "green light" shows are about ten times more mind-numbing than anything else. I wouldn't let my kid-relatives touch them with a ten foot pole. Singing Bee. Feh.

StopSnitchin

StopSnitchin

Hudson, NH
February 2004

SEP 06, 2007 08:10 AM

but, Transformers and G.I. Joe are cool! surreal

JoLeigh

JoLeigh

SUICIDEGIRL

Florida, USA

SEP 06, 2007 08:17 AM

Thank god my parents wouldn't let me watch cable....
they would throw me outside with a bucket of chalk and tell me to go get dirty....

as I sat there and would draw my fav cartoons surely ren and stimpy is educational right? right?

graphicsman77

graphicsman77

Pasadena, MD
June 2007

SEP 06, 2007 08:28 AM

I...didn't watch alot of TV growing up. Most of the shows my peers remember from childhood, I never watched. At all.

I don't really watch that much now. I'd rather be drawing, writing, or...get this....just thinking.

AND my kids sure as hell don't watch alot of TV. Especially witih the crap that's on there now.

Louis_XIV

Louis_XIV

France
August 2007

SEP 06, 2007 08:48 AM

I've never watched television and I do not know much about children, but decades of evaluating political relevant information from all over Europe have teached me that a correlation between to phenomena A and B does not necessarily mean that A is the cause for B. Maybe B is the cause of A, or A and B have a common cause C. or maybe A and B are part of a complex mecanism involving C, D, E, F and G to Y.

If Aspartame consumers frequently suffer from diabetes, does this mean that Aspartame causes diabetes? Does the cultivation of tulips lead to Protestantism? Does ketchup lead to strange ideas like democracy? Does eating brioche make rich? Be careful with deducting causal dependencies from what your mathematicians call statistical correlations.

Did you consider the possibility that children are more apt to watch television when they have problems paying attention to, say, a book or a fairytale told by their grandma? Or the possibility that children who have problems in school or family have a) attention problems and b) tend to "flee" to the artificial world of television? Or the possibility that both phenomena, attention problems and excessive television watching, may be caused by other factors like social status, intelligence, region, religion, education or whatever?

I don't say that television does NOT cause attention problems. All I'm saying is that you should be careful with deductions from census numbers (or what you people call "statistical data").

BlastProcessing

BlastProcessing

USA
OLD SKOOL

SEP 06, 2007 08:56 AM

Louis_XIV said:
Does the cultivation of tulips lead to Protestantism?



Not all gold comes from the West Indies, people.

Tallboy66

Tallboy66

Chicago, IL
January 2005

SEP 06, 2007 09:00 AM

I hope your not saying Cheese and macaroni is bad for you too, you know I love the little hot dogs cut up in it. oink

I use my TV as an alarm clock it's the perfect mix of annoying and the light variations really make it hard to go to sleep.

Question: how are millions of parents and caretakers going to keep there child entertained ?
I hope you don't mean actual human interaction or learning about THE REAL WORLD AROUND THEM !!! eeek

Sabine

Sabine

SUICIDEGIRL

Michigan, USA

SEP 06, 2007 09:14 AM

Louis_XIV said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
I've never watched television and I do not know much about children, but decades of evaluating political relevant information from all over Europe have teached me that a correlation between to phenomena A and B does not necessarily mean that A is the cause for B. Maybe B is the cause of A, or A and B have a common cause C. or maybe A and B are part of a complex mecanism involving C, D, E, F and G to Y.

If Aspartame consumers frequently suffer from diabetes, does this mean that Aspartame causes diabetes? Does the cultivation of tulips lead to Protestantism? Does ketchup lead to strange ideas like democracy? Does eating brioche make rich? Be careful with deducting causal dependencies from what your mathematicians call statistical correlations.

Did you consider the possibility that children are more apt to watch television when they have problems paying attention to, say, a book or a fairytale told by their grandma? Or the possibility that children who have problems in school or family have a) attention problems and b) tend to "flee" to the artificial world of television? Or the possibility that both phenomena, attention problems and excessive television watching, may be caused by other factors like social status, intelligence, region, religion, education or whatever?

I don't say that television does NOT cause attention problems. All I'm saying is that you should be careful with deductions from census numbers (or what you people call "statistical data").



of course one shouldn't claim this is a *causal* link based on this study (you simply can't just assume causation when it's clearly a correlation study...and you almost never see a directly causal study in psychology because it's almost impossible to control for every possible factor). but if you read the study, they did control for ""early-life attention difficulties, socio-economic factors and intelligence," many of the factors you mentioned. they should've controlled for home life as well. of course that still wouldn't make it a causal study.

Sabine

Sabine

SUICIDEGIRL

Michigan, USA

SEP 06, 2007 09:15 AM

oops..double post.

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