TV Unmasked: How Television Really Affects Our Kids

by Roger Desmond
Spring 1998

Televisionís influence on children is one of its most frequently investigated and well-documented social aspects. Study after study, a startling pattern emerges. Excessive television promotes increased tendencies towards violence, poor performance in school and shorter attention spans, to name just a few of the more notorious side-effects.

We may argue about how many hours children need to be glued to the set before it should be considered ěexcessive.î We can debate how much glorified TV sex and violence kids really have to see before they internalize it and start to practice it themselves. But there is clearly a line somewhere, and on a large scale, we have clearly crossed it.

Fortunately, unlike so many other social and economic forces that negatively impact our young people, TV is one we can actually do something about.

TV Violence

One of the clearest correlations between young people and television is that television watching by children and adolescents causes them to be more aggressive than they would be if TV did not exist.

A recent review of forty years of research on this issue by psychologists and communication researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Wisconsin concluded that the data are in on this question. It is now time to begin to remedy the problem. Beyond the sheer number of violent acts on TV, which is enormous, these researchers are even more concerned with the way TV programs characterize and glorify violence. Most programs do not feature punishment for characters who commit violent acts. Guns, knives and fists are shown as a primary means to solve problems. Crime-oriented shows do not clearly demonstrate the consequences of a violent act on its victims.

This covers most prime-time programming that isn't a sit-com or a soap opera: police shows, including ěreality shows,î popular prime-time dramas, and many televised movies and made-for-TV movies. Premium and regular cable channels often don't even try to limit this kind of entertainment to hours after young children are in bed, and child development experts point out that kid's bedtimes are getting later each year. It is increasingly evident that kidsí TV is adult TV, and there's a lot to be alarmed about in every TV menu.

Rating TV Shows For Content

In this light, it helps to think of television violence as a form of environmental pollution. As economist James Hamilton argues, TV violence is a lot like industrial waste or carbon monoxide: the producers of pollution do not always internalize the social costs of their activities. To remedy media pollution, it is necessary to administer corrective action, and there has been some progress toward a remedy during the past year.

Under threat of regulation by the U.S. Congress, television producers last year implemented an age-based rating system similar to that used by the film industry. The idea was to provide parents with more information about TV programs to help their children make smart program choices. Responding to continued criticism, most broadcast and cable networks in October, 1997 also added content codes--S for sex, V for violence, L for language, and D for suggestive dialogue--to accompany the age-based rating system. Advocates hope these ratings will help parents better decide what programs are appropriate for their children to watch. The new ratings are designed to work with the so-called "V-chip," which will soon be installed in every new TV and will allow parents to screen out programs within a certain rating category they don't want their children to see.

Obviously, the concern about TVís effect on children is high in the public mind. While the problem of television violence isn't about to disappear, at least broadcasters, lawmakers and parent groups are working constructively to resolve some of the most serious concerns.

Television and School Performance

There are many other problems that have not received as much attention as the issue of violence. One of these is the way excessive TV might affect school performance, especially with very young children who are just starting out in school.

Estimates on how much time kids spend watching TV range from three to six hours per weekday, more on weekends. Regardless of which estimates are correct, this figure means most kids spend more time watching TV than they spend engaged in serious learning, after you factor in lunch hours and recess. Also of concern is whether television takes time away from homework, reading and other school-related activities. Teachers become concerned, after all, when their students know more about Power Rangers or Beverly Hills 90210 than they do about math or reading. While research doesnít necessarily support this exact phenomenon, there is clearly a connection between the amount of TV a child watches and his or her school achievement. Studies indicate there are good reasons for parents to limit TV time, especially for very young children. George Comstock and H. Paik, in their 1991 book Television and the American Child state directly, "There is no question that the amount of time spent viewing television by American children and teenagers is negatively associated with their academic performance.î

A review of most research on the subject leads them to believe the problem stems from the way television interferes with a childís practicing certain academic skills, and its tendency to reduce a child's ability to concentrate. This is supported by another three-year study, in which my colleagues and I found that kindergartners and first-graders who were heavy viewers of television were less capable readers in second grade than were kids who did not watch as much, even when we took their IQs into account. In other words, the real damage may very well occur before children even begin to enter school.

Dr. Tom Van der Voort, a Dutch researcher, has conducted several large studies of the relationship between TV viewing and academic achievement. He also states that heavy viewers of television do not perform as well in school as lighter viewers. He attributes these results to a lack of attention span in the heavier viewing population. His term for this syndrome is ěconcentration deprivation,î and he believes that TV viewing is a major cause of the deficit.

One way that parents can combat learning deficits from excessive TV viewing is to make viewing less "mindless." Parents should audibly comment on ideas or portrayals they find interesting, stupid, unrealistic or offensive. A simple "Do you think that could happen in real life?" will help the child to become a more critical and attentive viewer. Using a program schedule, either printed or online, is another good idea, as conversations about which programs are or are not appropriate can stimulate a child's intellectual growth.

Understanding Narratives

There is evidence that excessive television watching can produce a deficiency in a child's ability to follow the plot of a story, regardless of whether she reads it or watches a televised story. In other words, the child may begin to "frame" reality as it appears on TV, in short, segmented scenes. A large part of reading comprehension is the ability to reflect on the events, motives and mental and emotional states of characters in a story. As Yale University psychologist Dr. Jerome Singer suggests, the fast pace of television does not allow much time for reflection.

There is also evidence of the tendency for "mindless" television viewing to interfere with children's comprehension of television. In the three-year panel study of children aged 6-9 mentioned above, the heaviest viewers of television comprehended less of a programís content than did lighter viewers. This effect continued throughout the second year of the study. This result is striking. When a child spends time reading, better reading skills will result. The opposite is apparently true with television. Watching TV may be one of the few activities where a child's ability to understand it can decrease over time!

Taken together, these results suggest that heavy viewing during a critical period in the development of young children (from age 3 to age 6) may have negative implications for both media literacy and reading comprehension. More research should be directed at this age group, but the bulk of evidence points to television viewing as one of several factors in the decline of reading comprehension during the past ten years. To help remedy the erosion of academic skills, research suggests that preschoolers' total TV watching should be limited to no more than 90 minutes per day, with slightly more allowed on weekends. While it's easy for researchers to suggest limiting a child ' s TV time to a busy parent, there are many good alternatives. A home with lots of books is a time-tested resource, but so are computers. Many parents are understandably concerned about unsupervised Internet use by young children, but there are countless educational and entertaining sites that can be explored by parents and children together. The major difference between surfing the Internet and viewing television is that with the Net, the user selects content with an active orientation to information. Apart from the Internet, there is also an abundance of good software available. The Broderbund "Arthur" CD, for example, invites a child to click on pictures in the story and hear sounds--accompanied by printed words--that help him or her to associate pictures, words and narratives.

TV and Homework

How about children who study with the TV on? Research in this area is much more straightforward: doing homework with a TV on, even if it isn't being actively watched, is a bad idea. It appears that television takes away some of the brain's information capacity to actively work on a problem, especially in a school subject that is particularly difficult. It's not due to a simple lack of attention, as when a loud noise causes us to look out the window while studying. It's more like a computer word processing program that doesnít run as fast while it is doing something else. Studying slows down while the TV is on.

In a more recent study, one investigator found that music doesn't appear to interfere with homework like TV does.

Better Children's TV, or Just Less of It?

In terms of sheer numbers, there are more high quality children's television shows around now than ever before. Programs like the Ghostwriter series on PBS help children become more interested in reading. The cable channel Nickelodeon has a number of terrific children's programs, and a glance at a TV Guide shows lots of improvement in entertainment for kids. But in terms of what we know about the TV-learning relationship, multiplying the number of great shows may not help the situation.

What the research summarized earlier suggests is that it is the amount of daily television watching that does the damage, not the actual content of the programs. I am most concerned about pre-schoolers who are in the demanding stages of learning to reason and to read. If the notion of concentration deprivation is correct, children clearly need less total television time more than they need better programs. For older children who are past the first three grades, there is some evidence that it may be too late in many ways. The damage occurs during the critical three to six year age period. Later on, TV may not interfere with much of anything. This may also be why some research has not found huge effects for older kids. Whatever impact TV has had on their learning just won't show up anymore.

Of course, when the violence research is also taken into account, content does matter. Many of the conclusions in that area suggest that even for adolescents and adults, there are residual effects of watching too many acts of aggression.

It is important to remember that television watching is an important source of recreation. It can bring us important information about the world and keep us entertained in a positive way. When viewing becomes excessive, however, there is a lot of evidence that it can interfere with learning, especially in early childhood.

What Can Be Done?

The research on remedies is quite clear. Many of the negative effects of television can be made positive by parents who discuss television programs with their children and who limit viewing time to one hour a day for very young children. This approach is called ěmediation,î and there is evidence from studies of television in the family that it can reverse many of TVís negative effects. It may take the form of asking a child questions like:

"Did you enjoy that program? What was good about it?"
"Could things that happened in the program happen in real life? Why or why not?"
"What would be another way to tell that story?"

Finally, there is a national movement under way to provide in-school lessons about TV and other media. Advocates of media literacy have persuaded the departments of education of two states, New Mexico and New Hampshire to mandate media education through grade twelve. Parents should support similar efforts now underway in other regions, so that a two-pronged attack from parents and schools can prevent the negative effects of excessive and mindless television viewing.

Roger Desmond, Ph.D., is an expert in media literacy and professor of communication at the University of Hartford. He has published numerous research articles on the topic of children's television and served as consultant to several children's TV programs.