Advertisement That guilt worsens when parents read research reports indicating that children under the age of two should not watch any television at all or when their pediatricians caution them about letting their kids spend too much time with the glowing, talking screen.
Certainly parents should heed such warnings, but they should also understand how television can benefit their children and where the real danger lurks.
The benefits
Television can be a wonderful teaching tool, especially with such abundant high-quality programming available today. For preschoolers, TV shows can help them learn the alphabet, numbers and colors. For kids of all ages, TV can take them places they may otherwise never see — whether to the pyramids of Egypt or inside the human body.
With its multi-sensory approach, television can evoke feelings of sympathy, longing, delight or joy and serve as an excellent tool for socialization and teaching values. It can expose children to the arts and sciences, music and different cultures, history and current events. And it can encourage reading and critical thinking.
Those are impressive benefits for such a maligned appliance.
The dangers
The problem comes when parents remove themselves from the picture.
Parents need to know how much and what children are watching. With cable, kids can access football, shopping, cartoons and infomercials 24 hours a day. They can access soap operas, prime time dramas and sitcoms intended for adults.
With even brief lapses in supervision, children can experience a range of lewd, violent, bigoted and other inappropriate content.
Such content can lead to bad outcomes. It can cause children to believe that something bad will happen to them. It can reinforce gender and racial stereotypes. It can lead to believing that risky behaviors are fun or cool. And it can make kids believe they must own a particular object or present themselves a particular way in order to be accepted.
Additional hazards include obesity (oft reported lately) and, equally frightening, isolation. Time spent watching television is time not spent interacting or engaging with others. It is time spent watching others ‘living’ instead of doing it oneself.
The antidote to these dangers is parental monitoring. Parents need to pay attention to rating systems when available, preview material to assess suitability and watch with (or at least continually check on) their children not only so they can turn off the television if content becomes inappropriate but also so they can take advantage of teaching opportunities.
You decide
Every family is different. Each has its own values and priorities and its own right to decide how much television is best for them and when. In making such decisions and before turning on the television, families may first want to weigh
Parents need to be deliberate about the role television plays in their own and their children’s lives. Is television a focal point because parents don’t have time or energy to engage directly with the children? How can television be used in increments that benefit their kids? How can viewing be limited to programs that match family values? What are parents modeling for their children?
The research on kids and television goes in many directions. Perhaps the best advice is to listen to the experts, stay abreast of the research and then make a conscious choice about what is best for your family. There is no black and white any more when it comes to television.
Jeanne Szatkowski is a therapist at the Family & Children’s Center in La Crosse.
