Switch on the kids' telly, switch off their brains

The effects on children of TV programme content, such as increased violence, has been well researched. However, a question being increasingly asked is what are the effects of the TV medium, regardless of content?

This article will firstly explore the effects of the TV medium on the brain and cognitive development of children. Secondly, why is TV so addictive that the Scientific American calls it a drug? Thirdly, I will argue — as does the American Association of Paediatrics (AAP) — that TV watching needs a health warning, so that parents are well informed about the damaging effects on their children.

Firstly, how does TV affect young children’s brains and attention? The AAP has recommended since 1999 that children under two should not watch TV, and that children should not have a set in their bedrooms because TV, ‘can negatively affect early brain development.’

‘Toxic TV? Yes, we get quite a few five-year-olds in who can hardly speak. One child can only speak like Donald Duck, and another child can only speak with an American cartoon accent,’ a teacher told me.

A study of 2,500 children in the AAP’s journal, Pediatrics, concluded that, ‘…early exposure to TV during critical periods of synaptic (brain cell) development would be associated with subsequent attentional problems.’

Moreover, they concluded that, ‘early television exposure is associated with attentional problems at age seven...consistent with a diagnosis of ADHD’. Children who watch TV up to three years, have a significantly increased risk of attentional problems by seven. For every hour watched, there is a 9 per cent increase in attentional damage. So banning all screen use in the early years, ‘may reduce children’s subsequent risk of developing ADHD.’ ADHD, now the most common behavioural children’s problem, affects 7 per cent of children, and is increasing.

Young brains are highly sensitive to TV and screen exposure, and get powerful rewards for paying attention. The rapid-fire images and loud sounds grab attention through the startle effect — which triggers the instinctive fight/flight orienting response, and then demands constant attentional shifts from viewers. So children have shorter attention spans, and find it harder to pay attention.

Scientists now suspect that the TV induced incessant hunger for new information gets chemically rewarded by the release of dopamine, a substance implicated in addiction.

Other cognitive problems discovered by researchers include:

Children are much less likely to read at six if they live in homes where the TV is on all the time;

TV viewing under three seems to damage children’s future learning skills e.g. maths, reading and comprehension — partly resulting from visual and auditory damage to the developing brain;

Children with TV in their bedrooms at eight to nine get the worst scores in school achievement tests;

A 26-year study researching children from birth concluded that TV viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with poor educational achievement by 26. Long-term damage resulted from a modest one to two hours per day viewing;

Dr Sally Ward, a Manchester speech therapist, was so struck by the large numbers of children attending her clinic with delayed speech that she surveyed 1,000 children. She found that over one in five pre-school children had listening and attention problems that delayed speech development. She saw children of two with virtually no ability to understand words: ‘Children are focusing exclusively on the noise from television and stereos, and ignoring the sound from human voices.’

Finally, the TV/brain effect explains why it’s so hard to switch off the TV. Herbert Krugman discovered that TV shuts down the critical left brain within 30 seconds of starting viewing the brain switches to alpha waves, indicating an unfocused, dream-like state. The right brain is then highly receptive to images and feelings. Both advertisers and politicians intuitively know how powerful the TV/brain effect is. TV undermines the decision-making area of the brain and children need help to switch it off.

Secondly, TV viewing is highly addictive — it is a plug-in drug. Unable to switch off, they sacrifice many important social activities and report withdrawal symptoms. Recently, researchers have found that TV is not just habit-forming, but that dopamine — strongly connected with a number of addictions — is implicated. Dopamine rewards our brains for paying attention, especially to stimulating, fast-paced images. So psychologist Aric Sigman concludes that, ‘We are being chemically rewarded for looking at a screen full of changing images and becoming neurochemically dependent.’

The mounting evidence from research into the health, brain, cognitive, and behavioural effects of the TV medium demands that parents need to be warned about these effects, and as the AAP now suggests, advised not to allow children up to the age of three to watch at all, and not to allow children to have their bedrooms stuffed with electronic media. When parents are informed about TV’s effects on young children, they can decide for themselves what is best.

Finally, the above research on TV’s effects on children supports the call by many parents that TV advertising to children up to 12 years should be banned, as in Sweden. The marketers are fully aware of just how powerful the TV medium is, how it bypasses the conscious, critical, decision-making brain and they exploit it very successfully.

It is not surprising then that many children today are under stress from an early age, put on ‘fast forward’ by commercialism and electronic overload. Children are branded, turned into products and consumers by the TV media and advertisers and are deliberately used as tools to exercise pester power on their parents’ consumer choices. Marketers know that children under eight cannot assess the persuasive intent behind adverts, and that the TV medium tunes children’s brains out to get their images in.

People are concerned about the increase of childhood depression, behavioural and developmental problems. Even though early TV viewing is one key factor in toxic childhood, giving a health warning to parents would make a difference. Banning TV advertising to young children would be a second, low cost action that would improve children’s wellbeing significantly. It could help reclaim childhood for children.

Martin Large was a Lecturer in Management and Behavioural Science, University of Gloucestershire, and is a signatory of the 12 September letter to the Daily Telegraph by 105 authors, academics and child care experts.

For detailed references see Large, M., Set Free Childhood: Parents Survival Guide for coping with computers and TV: Hawthorn Press, Stroud, UK, (2003) Chapters 4-7, and Sigman, A., Remotely Controlled, Vermilion, London, 2005.