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How About a Media Diet?
September 17, 2013
Thought flows in terms of stories - stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best storytellers. We learn in the form of stories.
-Frank Smith
The dangers of too much screen time for young children are well documented by the American Academy of Pediatrics:
  • Watching too much television makes kids more likely to be overweight.
  • It interferes with executive function and increases the risk of attentional problems.
  • If children watch programming that contains sex, it can make them have sex earlier.
  • It can make them more aggressive.
  • And ... a study from New Zealand states that the more television you watch as a child, the more likely you are to have a criminal conviction, a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, or more aggressive personality traits as an adult.
However, with all the messaging about cutting down children's screen time, not much is changing.  So now some pediatricians, such as Dr Dimitri Christakis at Seattle Children's Hospital, are urging parents to develop "media diets" with their children — guiding them to avoid violent and sexual content and focus more on prosocial programming.



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Comments (2)

Displaying All 2 Comments
Katy Gregg, Gregg · September 17, 2013
Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, GA, United States


Agree with Karen. This is worded oddly. Watching tv with sexual content does not MAKE the child have sex. There is a correlation- a relationship between increased sexual content and earlier intercourse. The same for violence- tv does not MAKE them aggressive. Correlation does not mean causation. There are many moderating variables to consider.

Karen Nemeth · September 17, 2013
United States


Some of the research listed here has already been called into question. For example - we now know that children growing up in poverty spend more time in front of a TV - so it may not be TV time, but the poverty that leads to higher incarceration rates and so on.



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