The act of reading fosters habits of analysis, questioning, comprehension, and rationality. Television, with its emphasis on emotion, image, and speed, fails to contribute to the development of these key skills.
- The NCES (2000)
"...watching three or more hours of television a day leads to poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, bad grades, and poor performance in college, according to a study published this week. " - CS Monitor (May 2007)
Via Trash Your TV Blog
"Young people spend an average of three hours a day watching TV, and close to four hours a day (3:51) when videos and prerecorded shows are included. TV-watching time is highest among younger kids: 8-to 10-year-olds spend more than four hours a day (4:10), including videos and recorded shows." - Kaiser (March 2005)
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How TV Effects Schoolwork
"No matter what your intelligence or social background, watching a lot of television during childhood means you are a lot less likely to have a degree by your mid-twenties, according to new University of Otago research." - University of Otago (July 2005) and PubMed (July 2005)
"Teenagers who watch television for three or more hours per day may have a higher risk of attention and learning difficulties in their adolescent and early adult years, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine." - News-Medical.net (May 2007) and New Scientist (May 2007) and The Guardian (May 2007)
"Too much TV-watching can harm children’s ability to learn and even reduce their chances of getting a college degree, three new studies suggest in the latest effort to examine the effects of television on kids." - MSNBC (July 2005)
"The roughly 40 percent increase in attention problems among heavy TV viewers was observed in both boys and girls, and was independent of whether a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder was made prior to adolescence." - Reuters (Sept 2007) also NZ Herald (Sept 2007) also New Scientist (Sept 2007)
"Middle school students who watch TV or play video games during the week do worse in school, a new study finds, but weekend viewing and gaming doesn't affect school performance much." - USAToday (Oct 2006) More on the same study - Telegraph (Oct 2006) - More on the same study - CBS News (Oct 2006) - and more MSNBC (Oct 2006) - and more Softpedia (Oct 2006)
"The results also showed that for seven- to 12-year-olds, the more TV they watched, the less time they spent doing homework, and among kids of all ages -- especially among those younger than five -- more TV meant significantly less creative play." - MedPage Today (Feb 2006)
"Children who watch violent horror and action movies suffer from poorer grades at school, according to new research." - Telegraph (Oct 2006)
"Strong correlation between NAEP Reading Long-Term Trend Scale Score and TV/video watching greater than 2 hours on school nights, with more hours watching corresponding to lower scores." - The Wing Institute (2009)
"Results showed that 3 hypothetical models fit the data-the time-displacement hypothesis, the mental effort- passivity hypothesis, and the attention-arousal hypothesis. A 4th hypothetical model, the learning-information hypothesis, which proposed that children's television viewing practices stimulate their academic achievement, was not supported. In sum, children who watched more television tended to spend less time doing homework, studying, and reading for leisure. In addition, their behaviors became more impulsive, which resulted in an eventual decrease in their academic achievement." - Red Orbit (Jan 2005)
"Big Brother and Little Britain are the television programmes that cause the most problem behaviour among children in schools, according to teachers surveyed by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL)." - Guardian (March 2009)
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TV in the Bedroom
"Children with bedroom TVs score lower on school tests and are more likely to have sleep problems. Having a television in the bedroom is strongly associated with being overweight and a higher risk for smoking." - The New York Times (March 2008)
"A study of elementary school students found that children who had television sets in their bedrooms scored significantly lower on school achievement tests than children without TVs in their bedrooms." - Science Daily (July 2007)
"TV in child's room may hinder learning" - MSNBC (July 2005)
"One in three children between the age of 6 months and 6 years have a TV set in their bedrooms. And children who have TVs in their bedrooms spend an average 30 minutes more per day watching TV than those who don't." - Washington Post (May 2006)
"The Watching, Wanting and Wellbeing report from the National Consumer Council found nearly half the children from better-off families surveyed had televisions in their bedrooms, compared with 97% of the nine- to 13-year-olds from less well-off areas." - The Guardian (July 2007)
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Preparing for School (children under six)
""We've known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why," said Christakis. "This study is the first to demonstrate that when the television is on, there is reduced speech in the home. Infants vocalize less and their caregivers also speak to them more infrequently."" - Science Daily (June 2009)
"The results of this study have important implications for language acquisition. It indicates exposure to language via television is insufficient for teaching language to very young children. To learn new words, children must be actively engaged in the process with responsive language teachers." - Science Daily (July 2007)
"In the latest study on the effects of popular videos such as the "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby" series, researchers find that these products may be doing more harm than good. And they may actually delay language development in toddlers." - Time (August 2007)
"It turns out that background television -- even simple background noise -- can affect young children more than we might think. According to a series of studies that have accumulated over the past decade, growing up in a noisy or "always on" TV environment may have negative consequences for speech development, playtime and parent-child interaction." - Washington Post (Oct 2007)
"Can the noise level inside your house actually make it harder for your baby to learn to talk? Researchers now say turning down the TV can actually help your child find their voice faster. " - Science Daily (Sept 2005)
"The more television infants and toddlers watch, the more likely they are to have trouble paying attention and concentrating during their early school years, a study reports Monday." - USAToday (April 2004)
"Children under the age of three who are allowed to watch too much television have below-average reading abilities by the time they are six, a new study claims." - Telegraph (Nov 2005)
"Approximately 40 percent of three-month old children and about 90 percent of children age 24 months and under regularly watch television" - Science Daily (May 2007)
In The Plug-In Drug : Television, Computers, and Family Life, Marie Winn argues TV viewing by very young children and their parents leads to delayed language acquisition and then to reading and cognitive problems later on.
"But smart kids with educated parents watch less TV and spend more time reading books, the national study of more than 3000 four and five-year-olds shows." - Herald Sun (July 2007)
"According to the Associated Press, the report found that "very young children" (under age 6) who live in homes where the television is on most of the time may have more trouble learning how to read than other kids their age." Personal MD (Oct 2003)
"Daily television viewing for two or more hours in early childhood can lead to behavioral problems and poor social skills, according to a study of children 2.5 to 5.5 years of age conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health." - Science Daily (Oct 2007)
"Once upon a time, we read bedtime stories. But not so much today as fewer parents share books with kids." - Houston Chronicle (Dec 2007)
"Heavy TV viewing under 2 is found. Ignoring risks, parents cite 'educational' value." - Boston.com (May 2007)
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The Importance of Talking
"All-day television, the demise of the family meal and even the forward-facing design of pushchairs are conspiring to kill the art of conversation between parents and children. The results have "alarming implications" for pupil behaviour in the first few years of primary school..." - The Independent (April 2006)
"Young children, more used to watching television than talking, are to be encouraged to improve their communication skills." - BBC (Nov 2003)
Family Meals spell S-U-C-C-E-S-S "A Reader’s Digest survey of more than 2,000 high-school seniors compared academicachievement with family characteristics. Eating meals with their family was a stronger predictor of academic success than whether they lived with one or both parents." - Purdue University
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More TV = Less Attention
"Conditioning attentional skills: examining the effects of the pace of television editing on children's attention"
"Methods: School children (aged 4–7 years) were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Each group was presented with either a fast- or slow-edit 3.5-min film of a narrator reading a children's story. Immediately following film presentation, both groups were presented with a continuous test of attention."
"Results: Performance varied according to experimental group and age. In particular, we found that children's orienting networks and error rates can be affected by a very short exposure to television."
"Conclusion: Just 3.5 min of watching television can have a differential effect on the viewer depending on the pacing of the film editing. These findings highlight the potential of experimentally manipulating television exposure in children and emphasize the need for more research in this previously under-explored topic." - Acta Pædiatrica (June 2009)
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TV and Learning
"...students who reported watching three or fewer hours of television each day had higher average reading scores than students who reported watching more television" - National Center for Education Statistics (March 1999)
"Does TV viewing harm kids' brain development?" - New Citizen (Fall 1992)
"Many studies, including NAEP reports, have indicated a negative relationship between television viewing and reading achievement (Mullis, et al. 1993; Beentjes and Van der Voort, 1988). One major concern has been that time spent watching television may be displacing time that students could spend on literacy-related activities. In 1994, students who reported watching at least four hours of television daily displayed lower average reading scores than their peers who watched less television each day (table 4)." - NAEP (1994)
"Excessive television watching is negatively related to children’s and youths’ academic attainment. For example, children and adolescents in grades 4, 8, and 11 who watch five or more hours of television per day have on average substantially lower test scores than other children." - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1997)
Excerpted from Endangered Minds - Kids' Brains Must Be Different ...
"To sum up: the introduction of television made kids more aggressive, harmed the acquistion of reading skills, decreased creativity scores, and cut participation in non-TV leisure activities." - A Review: The Impact of Television: A Natural Experiment in Three Communities see Amazon
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Educational TV
Imagination is more important than knowledge, for while knowledge points to all there is, imagination points to all there will be - Einstein
But what about educational TV? TV is an effective means of passive learning. Unfortunately TV (educational or not) associates a very rewarding experience with no effort. Before TV there was no equivalent experience other than day dreaming. So kids get used to learning and being rewarded with no effort on their part, in other words watching TV is actually training their brain to be lazy. Then when it's time to start school, learning takes effort and is quite boring compared to TV. Even play takes effort, hence the common observation that kids who watch a lot of TV are less interested in playing.
Well, why not just have the kids go to school and learn from educational TV? Education is about more than just info aquisition, it's also about learning skills, such as reading, writing, math, etc. And learning skills takes effort. After thousands of hours of effortless learning (and being rewarded) kids are that much less motivated to make that effort. And that's something that makes life much harder for our nation's teachers.
For those kids not raised on TV, making an effort becomes second-nature. This would help explain this study: ...watching a lot of television during childhood means you are a lot less likely to have a degree by your mid-twenties, according to new University of Otago research
Maybe it's the failed work ethic of todays kids
Self-Discipline More Important Than IQ ?
High IQ: Not as good for you as you thought
The secret of self-control
Passive Learning From Television (pdf)
Habit Learning - TV Makes Learning Less Efficient
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Video Games
 "A new study by Weis and Cerankosky, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, suggests that video-game ownership may negatively impact some aspects of school performance." - Psychology Today Blog (March 2010) and Psychology Today Blog (April 2010)
"On school days, teen boys who play video games appear to spend less time reading and teen girls who play video games appear to spend less time doing homework than those who do not play video games" - ScienceDaily (July 2007)
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