Children who spend more time watching television spend less time interacting with their family and playing creatively, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Children's Hospital in the journal Pediatrics.
By studying children's activities over 24-hour periods, Dr. Elizabeth Vandewater and her colleagues provide evidence for the first time that supports the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) television viewing recommendations.
AAP recommends that children under the age of two should not watch television and children older than two should watch no more than two hours of television daily.
"When AAP made these recommendations, we actually knew nothing about how much time infants and toddlers were spending in front of the screen," says Vandewater, lead author and associate professor of human ecology at The University of Texas at Austin. "Now we know that time spent watching television is negatively related to time spent with parents."
While television time impinged on familial interactions for all age groups, Vandewater found this to be strongest in older children, ages nine to 12, because they spent less time with their parents overall.
"Though AAP is specifically concerned about younger kids, I would urge parents to consider how television is impinging on their time with older kids as well," says Vandewater.
Children spend more time watching television than any other single free time activity, and Vandewater and her colleagues want to understand how this affects childhood health and behavior.