Washington Post
04-17-06
TV viewing: Company counts
Watching alone is bad for kids
By Sandra G. Boodman, The Washington Post
The kind of television shows children watch and whom they watch them with can
be just as important as the amount of time they spend in front of the tube,
researchers at Boston's Children's Hospital report in a new study that finds an
association between violent shows and peer problems.
Children who watch violent television programs -- especially those who watch
such shows alone -- spend less time with friends than children who watch a lot of
nonviolent programs.
Although the federally funded study could not determine a cause-and-effect
relationship, researchers suspect that one exists. They suggest that violent
shows might teach and encourage aggressive behavior in children, which, in
turn, isolates them from their peers.
And that isolation, scientists suggest, appears to create a cycle that makes
violent programs on television more attractive to lonely children.
''A lot of studies about violence and television deal with behavioral outcomes that
don't resonate with people" because they occur years later, said David Bickham,
lead author of the study, which involved 1,356 children and appears in the
Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. ''We wanted something with a
real-life outcome" that would motivate parents to consider the potential
consequences of uncensored viewing that are more immediate.
While concerns about the harmful impact of violent TV shows on children are
scarcely new -- the US surgeon general issued a warning in 1972 -- their
influence on children's friendships and social activities has been little studied.
''This is a very interesting and novel study," said research psychologist Craig
Anderson, an expert on children and media who is a professor at Iowa
State University. ''There really haven't been studies looking at TV violence" and
peer relationships among children. ''What they propose does make a lot of
sense."
The study, by scientists at the Harvard-affiliated hospital's Center on Media and
Child Health, suggests that the content of shows and the context in which they
are viewed may influence social relationships in a more complicated way than
previously believed.