Wednesday, January 31, 2001

Responsible TV/computer use

By GREGORY K. MOFFATT
Child's Play

It has been a while since I have written about television and video, but as computers become more common and as satellite television gives us more and more options, the issue is as important as ever.

We do not have cable TV service or a satellite at our home, but over the holidays, we were visiting with relatives who do. My children love TV and I recognized how much time my children would be willing to waste on TV if they were allowed.

An interesting contradiction that I noticed was that the shows my children were watching were good programs mostly educational shows. Cable TV, by far, has more age-appropriate and productive programming than the networks.

Yet it just isn't physically or cognitively healthy for a child (or adult, for that matter) to sit in front of the television for hours at a time.

Children who watch a lot of television, or spend several hours a day with computer games, are more lethargic, and are physically less fit than children who don't.

Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) show more aggressive and uncontrollable behaviors if they are exposed to rapidly changing media the very type of images that are common in video games and many television programs.

A recent study by Standford University that was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine showed that the more television and video games grade school children were exposed to, the more physically and verbally aggressive they were. In turn, when children were exposed to less television and video games, their aggressive behavior decreased.

This may seem self-evident to you, but it is actually a new finding. It was once thought that only children who were already aggressive were detrimentally affected by television and video games. In other words, these media caused children who were already aggressive to be more aggressive.

Yet this new study presents the possibility that even nonaggressive children are more aggressive based on television and video game exposure, and that reducing exposure to these media can be a treatment for aggressive behavior in both types of children those who are already aggressive and those who are not.

We have chosen to greatly reduce television exposure in our home simply by reducing our options. Because we don't have cable, we only can receive three or four channels. If you choose to have television or to let your children play video games, I have a few suggestions for you.

First of all, as with any other area of their lives, children need supervision. If you let your child turn the television on and flip through two hundred channels with no plan or direction, you are doing them a disservice.

The same is true with computer games. Don't just let them play "some game" they got "somewhere." Supervise what they are watching and evaluate its appropriateness given the child's age, maturity, and level of responsibility.

Second, have a plan. Sit down at the beginning of the week and select the television shows that you would like to watch or that you want your children to watch.

Ask yourself what the program provides for you or your children that is productive. If it doesn't provide anything other than filling time, leave it off.

Preplanning also avoids using the television to waste time as you repeatedly flip through the channels looking for something interesting. I know that many of us have experienced flipping through the channels for 15-30 minutes, only to realize that there was nothing on worth watching. Hence, we wasted that much time.

Finally, even good things should have limits. Vitamins are good for you, but some vitamins are actually toxic if you ingest too much.

Decide how much time each day is to be allotted to television or video games. I suggest two hours a day is plenty for children, but I would prefer even less.

Find other things to substitute for sitting in front of the television or computer. Reading, playing games with other family members, talking walks together, bicycle riding, crafts, and talking about the day are all things we do as a family during times when many families are all in separate rooms watching the "tube."

The television and computer are not evil things. They are tools that can be both useful as well as destructive, depending on how responsibly we use them.