Television Viewing and the Impact to Our Children

Television is sown into the fabric of our nation with many households owning not one but many televisions. As we are able to take television with us wherever we go using smartphones, tablet computers and laptops there really aren’t many places that are free from the “electronic babysitter” as it is sometimes called. In fact, today’s families watch during dinner, children watch before and after school (some even watch at school), some children watch in the car and many children have televisions in their bedrooms which means falling asleep each night to the lights and noise of their favorite programming. One might say that television has taken over our lives with many people planning activities around their favorite shows. As television viewing continues to become a larger part of our daily lives, it begs the question – what impact is all of this television watching having on our children? That is a question that many researchers have attempted to answer and mounting evidence shows that children who watch television are at increased risk of attention problems, have a tendency to display more aggressive behaviors and are far more likely to struggle academically than their peers.

For years, there has been speculation that television viewing alone was a major contributing factor, if not the cause altogether, of attention problems in children. Although there is a strong correlation between difficulty paying attention and excessive television viewing, there are also several other factors to consider as well.

There have been several studies looking at television viewing in young children as well as older children. In a 2007 study, researchers looked at the impact that television has on children both younger and older, and cites that young children who watch television between the ages of birth to three were far more likely to develop attention problems as they got older. The researcher theorized the reason for this attention deficit was that significant brain...