How TV affects your child

Television has the potential to impart information, inform opinion and provide relaxation. But it may also negatively impact on a child’s health and portray certain models and values to children before they are cognitively ready to separate fantasy or opinion from fact, or to critically assess what they are watching.

 The television-watching habits a child acquires as a pre-schooler are likely to stay with them for life, which means there is an opportunity to impart healthy lifestyle choices. So how do you avoid the pitfalls?

Negative impacts

Television may have a negative impact on children’s body composition in a number of ways, including:

• Taking the place of physical activity
  

• Increasing food intake by eating while watching
  

• Effectively advertising high-fat and/or high-sugar foods
  

• Slowing the body’s energy use.
  

Most children relax in front of the TV and don’t spend much energy. Foods are the most commonly advertised products on children’s TV, and ads for high-fat, high sugar foods predominate. Research consistently shows that they influence children’s food preferences.

Food intake in children increases after exposure to food ads, and they are more likely to choose advertised products. Young children are likely to see foods promoted as “good” and being healthy. One study showed that the nutritional knowledge and reasoning of early-primary school children decreased with the amount of television they watched. Greater TV use is associated with higher intakes of sugar, fatty and salty snacks and fizzy drinks, and lower intakes of fruit and vegetables.

As a group, foods advertised on TV are high in fat, saturated fat, protein, free sugars and salt, and low in fibre and some micro-nutrients. Attention: these are the kinds of food associated with obesity and dental caries in childhood and heart disease, diabetes and cancer in adulthood.

Unhealthy weight gain

One of the obvious problems with television is that it’s incredibly sedentary. Almost any other activity, even reading, burns more calories. There’s a direct correlation between hours of children’s TV viewing and weight – the more television, the greater the child’s weight. If a large television viewing habit continues into adulthood, it can increase the risk of chronic diseases.

Increasing hours spent watching TV is associated with increasing obesity, and this is worse for children who are otherwise not very active or who have a high fat intake. Recent studies show children who are heavily exposed to junk food advertising consume, on average, 40% more calories than children who watch ad-free television.

The relationship between obesity and television-watching is as true for the preschooler as it is for the older child. The excess weight accumulates over the years, so the younger a child starts logging up hours in front of the TV, the more years they have to accumulate fat. Children’s bodies have the least fat at around 4-6 years of age. The younger a child hits this point and then starts gaining body fat, the more likely they are to be obese in later life; so fatness in the pre-school age may have longterm consequences. Therefore, pre-schoolers regular active play is the best way to help prevent later obesity.

Effect on behaviour

Television exposes children to experiences that are not a normal part of their life. It has been known for some time that childhood exposure to media violence predicts aggressive behaviour in young adult males and females. This is more likely where the aggressive TV character is one that children identify with (the hero) and where they perceive the TV violence to be real.

Learning social norms

Children indirectly learn social norms by watching the way actors interact on television. These norms cover every aspect of human behaviour life from sex and violence to alcohol, nutrition and many other areas. Programs where characters regularly depict risky behaviours, such as constant snacking, smoking and excessive drinking, subtly communicate to children that these behaviours are acceptable, even “normal”.

Tips

1. Television-watching should be a small part of life and not the default activity for when nothing structured is on. Creative play, reading and hobbies are preferable as primary pursuits. So how do you keep them away from the boTV? Minimise the number of TVs available. Don’t allow one in your child’s room. Have the TV positioned where you can keep an eye on what they’re watching and out of view of the dining room.
2. Model good behaviour. Turn the TV on to watch a selected program and turn it off when you have finished. Don’t snack as you watch.
3. When your child asks, “Can I watch TV?” ask them what they want to watch. Let them know what is going to happen when it finishes.
4. Make tapes of programs of good educational content, for the times that you would like them to watch – for example, when they’re too sick for other activities. Choose ones that are educational and non-violent.
5. Try to watch shows together and discuss them afterwards.
6. Limit the hours of viewing. Limiting children’s total media time to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day – this includes all TV, videos, DVDs, Playstation, computer time etc. It recommends discouraging TV viewing for children under 2 and encouraging “interactive activities that promote proper brain development, such as talking, playing and reading together”.
7. Don’t have the TV on during meals. They are an important time to be social with your children. Particularly avoid the news during mealtimes if you have young children. The concept that the day’s horrors are unlikely to happen to them may be hard for them to grasp. 

Everything in moderation

Like anything in life, watching television is something that’s fine in moderation. Television can entertain and educate children but this needs to be balanced with time for outdoor activities, socialising with other children and time spent with good role models.