Help your kids protect their brains and their eyes: avoid watching more than 1 hour of tv per week.

Ever wonder if you or your kids have an addiction? This one is an easy yes in most American homes if you talk about addiction number one: screen time, tv, ipod, iphone, computers.

When I was an intern at Harvard Medical School, I met my future husband’s advisor who was the youngest ever to obtain a PhD in physics in the Netherlands. He was a normal kind of guy and very brilliant. He told us of how he grew up without a tv. 

I remember clearly being shocked: a world without a tv? What planet was he from?

My parents were immigrants so had the tv on the majority of the day, in efforts, my mom subliminally noted to improve her English & ours. I studied with tv, I vegged out in front of the tv after school. A world without the tv was so foreign to me, that this Harvard PhD could have just told me he was from Jupiter. I remember thinking, but he is so normal, and he is smart: how is that possible without a tv.

After we had our sons, I finally understood the brilliant decision his parents made in standing firm and not having a tv when likely everyone around them had one. Kids brains, especially boy’s brains, are easily distractible and if you introduce them to tv early on, it becomes a significant addiction. We soon learned that family life was happier, easier, and more peaceful without a tv. I learned personally to not miss all “my shows.” We have now also introduced “Quiet Time” where we sit in a room together and just all read together for 30 minutes or more on the weekends. It has been wonderful watching the kids (even the younger children_ concentrate for that time and learn how to entertain themselves quietly by reading. 

If you want to find out if you or your kids have an addiction, get rid of the tv (preferably out of the house) for 48 hours and see who complains the first and the most. There will be “withdrawal symptoms” for about that time depending on how badly one is addicted, but fear not, those symptoms do disappear and the kids and you will find you do not miss it as much especially if you fill that “craving” time with good books or shared time together. 

From American Academy of Pediatrics:

Media and Children

Media is everywhere. TV, Internet, computer and video games all vie for our children’s attention. Information on this page can help parents understand the impact media has in our children’s lives, while offering tips on managing time spent with various media. The AAP has recommendations for parents and pediatricians.
Today’s children are spending an average of seven hours a day on entertainment media, including televisions, computers, phones and other electronic devices. To help kids make wise media choices, parents should monitor their media diet. Parents can make use of established ratings systems for shows, movies and games to avoid inappropriate content, such as violence, explicit sexual content or glorified tobacco and alcohol use.
Studies have shown that excessive media use can lead to attention problems, school difficulties, sleep and eating disorders, and obesity. In addition, the Internet and cell phones can provide platforms for illicit and risky behaviors.
By limiting screen time and offering educational media and non-electronic formats such as books, newspapers and board games, and watching television with their children, parents can help guide their children’s media experience. Putting questionable content into context and teaching kids about advertising contributes to their media literacy.
The AAP recommends that parents establish “screen-free” zones at home by making sure there are no televisions, computers or video games in children’s bedrooms, and by turning off the TV during dinner. Children and teens should engage with entertainment media for no more than one or two hours per day, and that should be high-quality content. It is important for kids to spend time on outdoor play, reading, hobbies, and using their imaginations in free play.
Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child’s brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.
Additional Resources

It’s Official: To Protect Baby’s Brain, Turn Off TV

A decade ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested that parents limit TV consumption by children under two years of age. The recommendations were based as much on common sense as science, because studies of media consumption and infant development were themselves in their infancy.
The research has finally grown up. And though it’s still ongoing, it’s mature enough for the AAP to release a new, science-heavy policy statement on babies watching television, videos or any other passive media form.
Their verdict: It’s not good, and probably bad.
Media, whether playing in the background or designed explicitly as an infant educational tool, “have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years,” concluded the AAP’s report, released Oct. 18 at the Academy’s annual meeting in Boston and scheduled for November publication in the journal Pediatrics. “Although infant/toddler programming might be entertaining, it should not be marketed as or presumed by parents to be educational.”
Since the AAP made its original recommendations in 1999, passive entertainment screens — televisions, DVD players, computers streaming video — have become ubiquitous, and the average 12-month-old gets between one and two hours of screen time per day. (Interactive screens, such as iPads and other tablets, are considered in the new recommendations.) The 0- to 2-year age group has become a prime target for commercial educational programming, often used by parents convinced that it’s beneficial.
As screens proliferated, so did research. “There have been about 50 studies that have come out on media use by children in this age group between 1999 and now,” said Ari Brown, a pediatrician and member of the AAP committee that wrote the new report.
Those studies have found that children don’t really understand what’s happening on a screen until they’re about 2 years old. Once they do, media can be good for them, but until then television is essentially a mesmerizing, glowing box.
Used at night, TV might help kids fall asleep, but that appears to come at a delayed cost of subsequent sleep disturbances and irregularities. While the result of TV-induced sleep problems hasn’t been directly studied, poor sleep in infants is generally linked to problems with mood, behavior and learning.
At other times, media consumption comes with opportunity costs, foremost among them the silence of parents. “While television is on, there’s less talking, and talk time is very important in language development,” said Brown.
‘The way these kids’ programs came out was, ‘These are really educational!’ Well that’s great, but prove it. Show me the science.’

Three studies since 1999 have tracked educational television use and language development, and they found a link betweenincreased TV time and developmental delays. Whether that’s a cause or effect — parents who leave kids in front of televisions might simply be poor teachers — isn’t clear, nor are the long-term effects, but the AAP called the findings “concerning.” In the same vein, there may also be a link to attention problems.

Even when media plays in the background, it distracts babies from play, an activity that is known to have deep developmental benefits. And for parents who use media to carve out a few precious, necessary free minutes in busy schedules, Brown recommended letting kids entertain themselves.
“We know you can’t spend 24 hours a day reading to your child and playing with them. That’s okay. What’s also okay is your child playing independently,” she said. “That’s valuable time. They’re problem-solving. They’re using their imagination, thinking creatively and entertaining themselves.”
As for iPads and other kid-friendly interactive computing devises, Brown said research has barely started, much less come to conclusions. But she counseled skepticism of promotional claims, which have been made with some of the same zeal as products of now-dubious standing, such as the controversial Baby Einstein videos.
“The way these kids’ programs came out was, ‘These are really educational! They’re going to help your kids learn!’ Well that’s great, but prove it. Show me the science,” Brown said. “I don’t have a problem with touch screens, and they’re not necessarily bad. But we need to understand how this affects kids.”
Image: Yoshihide Nomamura/Flickr
Citation: “Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years.” By the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Communications and Media Executive Committee. Pediatrics, Vol 128 No. 5, November 2011.


From NYT:

Parents Urged Again to Limit TV for Youngest

Daniel Lai/Aurora Photos
Watching TV while a parent is busy: Video screen time has no educational benefits for young children, a report says.

By 

Published: October 18, 2011

Parents of infants and toddlers should limit the time their children spend in front of televisions, computers, self-described educational games and even grown-up shows playing in the background, theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics warned on Tuesday. Video screen time provides no educational benefits for children under age 2 and leaves less room for activities that do, like interacting with other people and playing, the group said.

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The recommendation, announced at the group’s annual convention in Boston, is less stringent than its first such warning, in 1999, which called on parents of young children to all but ban television watching for children under 2 and to fill out a “media history” for doctor’s office visits. But it also makes clear that there is no such thing as an educational program for such young children, and that leaving the TV on as background noise, as many households do, distracts both children and adults.
“We felt it was time to revisit this issue because video screens are everywhere now, and the message is much more relevant today that it was a decade ago,” said Dr. Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Tex., and the lead author of the academy’s policy, which appears in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics.
Dr. Brown said the new policy was less restrictive because “the Academy took a lot of flak for the first one, from parents, from industry, and even from pediatricians asking, ‘What planet do you live on?’ ” The recommendations are an attempt to be more realistic, given that, between TVs, computers, iPads and smartphones, households may have 10 or more screens.
The worry that electronic entertainment is harmful to development goes back at least to the advent of radio and has steadily escalated through the age of “Gilligan’s Island” and 24-hour cable TV to today, when nearly every child old enough to speak is plugged in to something while their parents juggle iPads and texts. So far, there is no evidence that exposure to any of these gadgets causes long-term developmental problems, experts say.
Still, recent research makes it clear that young children learn a lot more efficiently from real interactions — with people and things — than from situations appearing on video screens. “We know that some learning can take place from media” for school-age children, said Georgene Troseth, a psychologist at Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, “but it’s a lot lower, and it takes a lot longer.”
Unlike school-age children, infants and toddlers “just have no idea what’s going on” no matter how well done a video is, Dr. Troseth said.
The new report strongly warns parents against putting a TV in a very young child’s room and advises them to be mindful of how much their own use of media is distracting from playtime. In some surveys between 40 and 60 percent of households report having a TV on for much of the day — which distracts both children and adults, research suggests.
“What we know from recent research on language development is that the more language that comes in — from real people — the more language the child understands and produces later on,” said Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University.
After the academy’s recommendation was announced, the video industry said parents, not professional organizations, were the best judges. Dan Hewitt, a spokesman for theEntertainment Software Association, said in an e-mail that the group has a “long and recognized record of educating parents about video game content and emphasizing the importance of parental awareness and engagement.”
“We believe that parents should be actively involved in determining the media diets of their children,” he said.
Few parents of small children trying to get through a day can resist plunking the youngsters down in front of the screen now and then, if only so they can take a shower — or check their e-mail.
“We try very hard not to do that, but because both me and my husband work, if we’re at home and have to take a work call, then yes, I’ll try to put her in front of ‘Sesame Street’ for an hour,” Kristin Gagnier, a postdoctoral researcher in Philadelphia, said of her 2-year-old daughter. “But she only stays engaged for about 20 minutes.”
In one survey, 90 percent of parents said their children under 2 watched some from of media, whether a TV show like “Yo Gabba Gabba!” or a favorite iPhone app. While some studies find correlations between overall media exposure and problems with attention and language, no one has determined for certain which comes first.
The new report from the pediatrics association estimates that for every hour a child under 2 spends in front of a screen, he or she spends about 50 minutes less interacting with a parent, and about 10 percent less time in creative play. It recommends that doctors discuss setting “media limits” for babies and toddlers with parents, though it does not specify how much time is too much.
“As always, the children who are most at risk are exactly the very many children in our society who have the fewest resources,” Alison Gopnik, a psychologist at the University of California, said in an e-mail.
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