Gamer since age of 8 here. Title might be a little too optimistic. What kind of TV programs? What kind of games? Games were most probably suitable for children because they are bought by parents, but what about TV programs if not proprely supervised?
I think you're on to something there. That in this age group games used are more likely to be parent vetted whilst TV may be assumed to be benign and so subject to less scrutiny?
One of the most important sections of any published research study to look at is the methods section. Here is the methods section from the linked paper:
"Methods Typical daily hours viewing television and
playing electronic games at age 5 years were reported by
mothers of 11 014 children from the UK Millennium
Cohort Study. Conduct problems, emotional symptoms,
peer relationship problems, hyperactivity/inattention and
prosocial behaviour were reported by mothers using the
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Change in
adjustment from age 5 years to 7 years was regressed
on screen exposures; adjusting for family characteristics
and functioning, and child characteristics."
So all the data here were gathered by self-reports from the children's mothers. One of the first things to do to see if these results replicate in another sample is to gather data the next time by third-party observers. How much does a mother's estimate of how much screen time a child has differ from an observation by an objective observer? How much does an objective observer's observation of a child's behavior differ from the mother's self-report? I'd want to know details like that before drawing any particular conclusion about the facts of the world from this interesting study kindly submitted here.
Sadly, I don't think a study like that is likely to happen. How many families are willing to have someone hang around in their house 24/7 in order to monitor their child's viewing habits? How many research institutions can afford such a thing?
As far as drawing conclusions, I'm not sure it's necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Self-reporting does tend to be inaccurate in terms of absolute numbers. But as long as it tends to be accurate in relative terms - that is, that if people who say their child watches more TV tend to have children who actually do watch more TV - then we can draw relative conclusions. And the key takeaway points from this paper are still useful information even when you take the absolute numbers involved with a grain of salt. Simply knowing that TV viewing time is positively correlated with behavioral problems may not be a crystal-clear picture of the situation, but it's still useful knowledge for a parent.
>How many families are willing to have someone hang around in their house 24/7 in order to monitor their child's viewing habits? //
That's hardly required. An app installed on tablets or face recognition on a kinect-type device or webcam can monitor screen usage and be automated. Initially it's enough to show whether any sub-category of screen-bearing device is being reported correctly. TV is probably the easiest to monitor and could well be done using a relatively inexpensive "bug" stuck on the wall.
Thousands of families already have a Nielsen box on their tv.
How is this that different?
Add Kinect facial recognition if you don't want to code the data manually.
I play FPS shooters sometimes, it affects my behaviour and I'm a [reasonably!] well-adjusted adult. Perhaps I'm an outlier with undiagnosed mental issues but I'm not inclined to be convinced by such assertions.
You sound so laughably certain. What we are interested is in empirical truths here. Not agenda from any side. How can you know know a priori what is true? You cannot.
Anecdotal note: Our son wanted to watch Thomas the Train. The CGI version. We noticed that while he watched a ton of Team Umizoomi, some Paw Patrol and Diego... Thomas seemed to follow right along with some incredibly new behavioral issues. He was just a little badger.
We cut-off Thomas. Within 2 days, he was much easier to get along with. The books and toys were fine, just not that one show. His daycare said, "Yeah, he's been tons better. I didn't want to believe you, but he's had no timeouts and he's been much nicer."
Our running theory is that he was paying just enough attention to see when the trains were bad, but not enough attention to see how the bad behavior turned-out for the trains.
Our 8 year old Son is mildly Autistic. We try to limit the amount of iPad, Wii, DS, etc time he has but never really thought about how much TV he should be watching. It's not that we allow him a lot of time but we've noticed he'll memorize lines from shows and then reenact them. That wouldn't be a problem if is wasn't something like Uncle Grandpa or Adventure Time. Reading through this article I'll be thinking twice about how much TV time we give him.
I think you'd have to understand if there is a parallel behavior with parents who allow children to watch significant TV -- do these parents not read to kids, not talk to them, etc -- TV could be a symptom of other behavior which is influencing child,
That said, I do think TV and Games influence behavior...
Actually this study doesn't seem to show that games are harmless. The magnitude and variability of the effect for both TV time and games is similar. There are however far fewer children in the study playing games than watching TV. So the coefficient is statistically significant for TV but not for games. It seems it would be more accurate to state that all kinds of screen time have small negative effects on behavior but the effects of video game time should be more carefully studied in a follow up study with more subjects.
18 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 48.5 ms ] thread"Methods Typical daily hours viewing television and playing electronic games at age 5 years were reported by mothers of 11 014 children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Conduct problems, emotional symptoms, peer relationship problems, hyperactivity/inattention and prosocial behaviour were reported by mothers using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Change in adjustment from age 5 years to 7 years was regressed on screen exposures; adjusting for family characteristics and functioning, and child characteristics."
So all the data here were gathered by self-reports from the children's mothers. One of the first things to do to see if these results replicate in another sample is to gather data the next time by third-party observers. How much does a mother's estimate of how much screen time a child has differ from an observation by an objective observer? How much does an objective observer's observation of a child's behavior differ from the mother's self-report? I'd want to know details like that before drawing any particular conclusion about the facts of the world from this interesting study kindly submitted here.
As far as drawing conclusions, I'm not sure it's necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Self-reporting does tend to be inaccurate in terms of absolute numbers. But as long as it tends to be accurate in relative terms - that is, that if people who say their child watches more TV tend to have children who actually do watch more TV - then we can draw relative conclusions. And the key takeaway points from this paper are still useful information even when you take the absolute numbers involved with a grain of salt. Simply knowing that TV viewing time is positively correlated with behavioral problems may not be a crystal-clear picture of the situation, but it's still useful knowledge for a parent.
That's hardly required. An app installed on tablets or face recognition on a kinect-type device or webcam can monitor screen usage and be automated. Initially it's enough to show whether any sub-category of screen-bearing device is being reported correctly. TV is probably the easiest to monitor and could well be done using a relatively inexpensive "bug" stuck on the wall.
WoW is harmless, while the time wasted on it cannot be taken back or spent on acquiring valuable social experience or self-development.
Citation please.
I play FPS shooters sometimes, it affects my behaviour and I'm a [reasonably!] well-adjusted adult. Perhaps I'm an outlier with undiagnosed mental issues but I'm not inclined to be convinced by such assertions.
We cut-off Thomas. Within 2 days, he was much easier to get along with. The books and toys were fine, just not that one show. His daycare said, "Yeah, he's been tons better. I didn't want to believe you, but he's had no timeouts and he's been much nicer."
Our running theory is that he was paying just enough attention to see when the trains were bad, but not enough attention to see how the bad behavior turned-out for the trains.
That said, I do think TV and Games influence behavior...