Has it ever crossed your mind, as a parent, to let your infant watch television? I mean what could it hurt, right? They're too young to understand what's going on, it keeps them occupied while you get things done around the house, it's just impossible to give them your undivided attention all day long, and well, they seem to really like it. As harmless as it might sound, studies have shown that it is not so harmless.
Crucial brain development occurs until the age of three. During this time, your child is learning motor skills, learning how to speak, how to crawl, how to walk, what things are, learning the three dimensional perception of the world, and other very crucial things needed throughout life. They're like little sponges absorbing tons of information in a short amount of time, and it is vital as parents that you stimulate this growth and development.
Here are the negative impacts that allowing your infant to watch television can have.
1. Perception
Television is in a two-dimensional state. The real world is three dimensional. Children do not get the proper understanding of how things work, move, or feel parked in front of a television.
2. Motor Skills
Where is the interaction? A child will learn more rolling a ball, banging pots and pans, or shaking a rattle than they could ever learn by watching odd shapes on a screen.
3. Attention Disorders
Studies have shown that children exposed to television at a young age are associated with attention disorders linked to the diagnosis of ADHD (which usually begins to show around age seven). It has been found that, "For every hour of television a child watched per day, there was a nine percent increase in attentional problems." More from this scholarly journal can be read at Visual Voodoo: The Biological Impact of Watching TV.
4. Language Development
Words tend to be muffled from a movie, either by music, noise, or through speakers in general. A child needs clearly spoken words to speak properly. Language development issues and reading comprehension problems have also been linked to early television use. More information on this can be found at Television Viewing Associates with Delayed Language Development.
Although there are limited studies about the impact of infants watching television, (mainly due to the fact that experimenting on humans is unethical, especially with experiments such as these that can cause harm) what has been discovered is anything but harmless. Keep in mind that as the studies continue to grow, so can the problems being discovered. I hope that these four very important points will have you thinking about the effects watching television can have on your infant before placing them in front of a television screen.
