Television harmful for preschoolers

Having the television on in the background while preschoolers play with their toys disrupts their efforts to sustain attention and may harm their development. Paediatricians do not recommend television viewing for children less than 2 years, yet children are quite often exposed to television viewing at home. To assess how television viewing affects the attention of children, American researchers observed 50 children, who were 12, 24 and 36 months old, play with a variety of age-appropriate toys for an hour. For half an hour, a television was on in the room, showing an episode of the adult game show with commercials. During the other half hour, the TV was turned off.It was found that when the TV was on in the background, play at every age was disrupted, even when they paid less attention to the television, glancing at it for only a few seconds at a time and less than once per minute. It was also noted that the children played for significantly shorter periods of time as compared with when the TV was off.The findings suggest that TV is an audiovisual distractor that disrupts children's efforts to sustain attention to ongoing play behaviour.

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