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By Mom Unplugged, September 26, 2007 10:26 am

I haven’t written directly about TV and kids in a while, but this morning I happened to stumble upon this interesting recent study published in the May 2007 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, entitled Television and DVD/Video Viewing in Children Younger Than 2 Years.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under age 2 years, watch no TV. But how much TV are children under 24 months really watching? This study attempts to answer that question.

The findings:

- By 3 months of age, about 40% of children regularly watched TV, DVDs or videos.

- By 24 months of age, 90% of children regularly watched TV, DVDs, or videos.

- The median age at which regular media exposure was introduced was 9 months.

- Average viewing time per day for children less than 1 year: 1 hour

- Average viewing time per day for children ages 1 to 2: more than 1.5 hours

- Parents watched with their children more than half the time, but only 32% watched with their child every time.

- Most common reasons for media exposure in children less than 2: education, entertainment, babysitting.

Conclusions:

“Parents should be urged to make educated choices about their children’s media exposure. Parental hopes for the educational potential of television can be supported by encouraging those parents who are already allowing screen time to watch with their children.”

(Study was based on a telephone survey of 1,009 parents of children ages 2 months - 24 months, and was conducted by Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD; Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH; and Andrew N. Meltzoff, PhD.)

You can read the brief summary here, and the full article (which provides much more detail) here.

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By Mom Unplugged, August 13, 2007 11:00 am

This is old news now (about one week old) but I MUST blog about it. A study by Dr. Thomas Robinson, the director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine has found that children ages 3 to 5 tend to prefer the taste of food that comes in a McDonald’s wrapper over identical food which does not.

Dr. Robinson’s research team gave 63 children, ages 3 to 5, the following foods: chicken nuggets, a hamburger, french fries (all from McDonald’s) as well as baby carrots and milk (from the grocery store). Each child received two portions of each food. One portion was wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper or bag, the other was in a plain wrapper. The children overwhelmingly preferred the food in the McDonald’s wrapper over the identical food in the plain wrapper.

Dr. Robinson says:

“Kids don’t just ask for food from McDonald’s, they actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald’s tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget.”

Other interesting (and frightening) findings of the study are the following facts about the children:

- One third of the children ate at McDonald’s more than once a week.

- More than three-quarters had McDonald’s toys at home

- They had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes

- More than one-half the children had a TV in their rooms! (Wow! These kids are only 3 to 5 years-old!!!)

Discussing his findings, which seem to link TV-viewing with a preference for McDonald’s, Dr. Robinson said:

“We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald’s more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald’s wrapper. This is a company that knows what they’re doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children.”

This frightening placebo effect of food preference in children seems to me to be yet another argument in favor of placing some sort of limit on food marketing to kids. If you want to read a bit more about about recent efforts to put limits on food ads targeted to kids, please read my June 25th post Food Marketing to Kids.

So, in case anyone still had a doubt, kids as young as ages 3 to 5 can be successfully “branded” by large corporations spending billions on TV advertising targeted at young viewers.

OK. On a lighter note, I think I’d better stock up on McDonald’s wrappers for a proper presentation of my A-list brussels sprouts to my children. “Hey kids, did you know McDonald’s now serves brussels sprouts? Yum!!!!!”

The study: Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preferences appearing in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medecine, Vol. 161 No. 8, August 2007

(You can read an article about the study at the Washington Post online: Foods Taste Better With McDonald’s Logo, Kids Say.)

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer spress for the “Good Food” photo.

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By Mom Unplugged, July 3, 2007 8:33 am

One of the many great things about TV-free kids is that they really like to be outdoors. In the nice weather, my two oldest children are outdoors almost all the time. Without TV and video games, there is nothing much for them to sit around doing indoors. Besides - the lure of trees, rocks, bugs, bikes, scooters, swing sets, and “clubhouses” is too great.

In fact, last week I was very pleased that my children chose to go “sploring” outside (as my 5 year-old son calls it) despite being offered the opportunity to watch “Sprout” on TV at my sister’s house when we were there to have dinner. They climbed trees, found bugs, and moved sticks and rocks from “point A” to “point B.”

Several weeks ago, whymommy linked to a Washington Post article entitled Getting Lost in the Great Indoors. The basic point of the article is that today’s kids don’t like to go outdoors, unless the purpose is an organized activity such as soccer or Little League. They would rather be indoors with TV’s, computers, and video games.

A 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children ages 8 to 18 spend 6.5 hours a day on television, electronic games, computers, music and other media, with many multitasking electronically.

Here is a telling quote from the Washington Post article:

“In Great Falls, the Hefner family has a back yard of more than an acre, a green swath of kid heaven at the edge of Great Falls National Park. Three years ago, George Hefner, a general contractor who knows how to work a saw, built a two-story “treehouse” that stands on the ground between two leafy maples.

He imagined his children fixing it up, sleeping there.

But 10-year-old Paul cannot remember the last time he played in the little house. ‘Animals live out there, you know,’ he told his mother one day. His older sister Sarah, 16, admits that she has never set foot in it. ‘What would I do in a treehouse?’ she asked.”

According to the article, getting kids outdoors is a new venue for activists. There have been Capitol Hill hearings, state legislative action, grass-roots projects, and even a U.S. Forest Service initiative.

This recent public concern appears to be partly inspired by a book entitled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. This post may be a tad premature since I have not yet read Mr. Louv’s book. It remains on my “To Read” list. However Mother Rising wrote an interesting post about it, that makes me want to read it all the more! (Has anyone else out there read it yet?)

The book seems to be creating public awareness of a trend that many parents have been noticing for quite a while. In addition to the obvious culprits, TV and other electronics, the article also suggests that parental fears of leaving children unattended, more working mothers, and more organized sports may also be to blame.

It does seem that today’s kids are so overscheduled that there may be little time left for unstructured outdoor play. Overscheduling is something I would like to avoid if possible, but the lure of fun, educational activities is always there to tempt parents (a struggle I wrote about here: The 6 Year-Old and her Executive Secretary).

It is so sad to me that we need grass roots initiatives and Congressional hearings (not to mention the $20 million that 40 “civic leaders” are trying to raise to fund 20 country-wide initiatives) all simply to encourage kids to go outdoors.

I am fortunate to live in a small town. If I lived in a big city apartment it would obviously be much harder to get my kids outside. I wouldn’t be able to simply release them into the backyard. We would have to depend on family trips to the park, the country, etc. I do realize how lucky I am.

However, there are plenty of families who do have the ideal safe, kid-friendly yard (such as the family quoted above) and who nonetheless have problems getting the kids outside. My advice is to try turning off the TV and putting away the video games. You don’t need a $20 million initiative to get your kids outdoors! Just allow them to “be bored” and see what happens.

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer ximenez.

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By Mom Unplugged, June 25, 2007 10:46 am

Another good reason to unplug your kids is to reduce the amount of marketing that they are exposed to. One more interesting story on NPR this morning (in addition to the children’s book recommendations that I posted about here) is entitled: Child Obesity Concerns Prompt Shift in Food Ads.

The story quoted some frightening statistics: 2 to 7 year-olds see an average of 12 food ads per day (approximately 4,400 ads per year) and 8 to 12 year-olds see an average of 21 food ads per day (approximately 7,600 per year). Of course most of these ads promote candy, junky snacks, fast food, soda, and sugary cereals. (Kaiser Family Foundation study: Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States).

Much research has been done that establishes a link between childhood obesity and TV watching. The current thinking on this, is that it is not just the passive, sedentary nature of TV watching that contributes to obesity, but also the fact that the TV encourages children to want to consume the types of food that they see in the ads.

I am sure that this logic is debateable, however I would think that there would be very few parents who would object to a reduction in the marketing of unhealthy foods to their children, regardless of the reasoning behind that.

There is currently no legislation governing the marketing of food to children. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a consumer advocacy group that is trying to convince food companies to stop marketing junk food to first graders. Apparently the FTC is also pressuring the major food manufacturers to limit their marketing of unhealthy food to kids.

Last fall, eleven food companies (including Kraft, Kellogg’s, Coke, and General Mills) agreed to voluntarily limit the marketing money they spend on unhealthy ads and use more of that money to promote healthier foods. I do not know if there is any proposed timetable for the change, and having no TV I can’t say if there is a noticeable change in the types of food ads kids see (cynical me suspects not).

The food companies are worried that if they don’t set some voluntary guidelines for themselves, there will certainly be legislative, or even court action. Such non-voluntary restrictions might be stricter than limits the companies could set voluntarily now.

Stay tuned. I imagine that we shall be hearing more about this in the coming months. In the meantime, consider ad-avoidance another HUGE benefit of unplugging your kids!

To hear this interesting story in full, click here.

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com and photographer ppdigital.

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By Mom Unplugged, May 7, 2007 12:34 pm

TV and Toddlers is from the American Association of Pediatrics website:

TV and Toddlers

It may be tempting to put your infant or toddler in front of the television, especially to watch shows created just for children under age two. But the American Academy of Pediatrics says: Don’t do it! These early years are crucial in a child’s development. The Academy is concerned about the impact of television programming intended for children younger than age two and how it could affect your child’s development. Pediatricians strongly oppose targeted programming, especially when it’s used to market toys, games, dolls, unhealthy food and other products to toddlers. Any positive effect of television on infants and toddlers is still open to question, but the benefits of parent-child interactions are proven. Under age two, talking, singing, reading, listening to music or playing are far more important to a child’s development than any TV show. For more information on your child’s health, visit www.aap.org.

The previous script is part of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) radio series ‘A Minute for Kids.’ Feel free to use this or other AAP scripts in your local print or broadcast media, and in school or community newsletters. Please attribute the American Academy of Pediatrics as the source. For more scripts on children’s health, visit www.aap.org