L.A. Daddy says, ‘No More T.V.!’
Published October 17th, 2006 in L.A. Toddler, It's Really Just All About Me..., Boob Tube.Okay, I’m usually not much of a knee-jerk reactionary, but one of my biggest fears for Baby Girl has always been that she might develop autism. A friend was casually perusing the Cornell University website and discovered this little nugget of research information.
The title of the paper is: “Does Television Cause Autism?” by Waldman, Nicholson & Adilov. It’s worth a read.
The rate of autism have been growing by leaps and bounds in the past few decades. Back in the 70’s, one in 2500 children were diagnosed with it. Now, the rate is one in 166. That’s a huge jump! What else has increased during that time? The number of TVs in a house, cable TV, VCRs, DVD players, computer games, & portable players of all kinds…
Sure, it sounds coincidental and there is no hard evidence to prove it. But, you know what… even the suggestion of a problem is good enough for me, in this case. They’ve been studying autism for a long time and still there is very little known about the cause. Many believe that genetics do play a role but a lot of scientists are convinced that there is also an environmental trigger.
One of the interesting factors in this paper is that their study was based on children’s viewing habits in correlation with precipitation. They conducted their study in Washington, Oregon, and California — three states with a wide range of variable precipitation. Which makes sense — if it rains a lot outside, small children are apt to spend more time inside the house. And since spending more time indoors doesn’t necessarily mean more TV viewing, they had to add a test to factor that possibilty out. Also, they had a test set up to survey residents of California and Pennsylvania with homes subscribed to cable televsion during the 70’s and 80’s. They found that the rate of homes connected to cable and the rate of autism grew dramatically, versus homes without cable.
The American Academy of Pediatricians has always recommended no television for children under two and no more than 1 to 2 hours of TV per day for older children. We have been somewhat careful around L.A. Toddler and her TV viewing. She loves her shows and would probably watch 14 hours straight, if she could. We’ve been encouraging her to play more and not watch TV, but I haven’t been setting a very good example of late — it’s football seaon, fer chrissakes! How am I not supposed to watch TV when there’s football on every Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night?!
Well, I’m going to have to bite the bullet, I guess (and TiVo the games to watch when she goes to bed — not cut out entirely. I mean… come on!)
18 Responses to “L.A. Daddy says, 'No More T.V.!'”
- 1 Trackback on Oct 17th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
- 2 Pingback on Oct 31st, 2006 at 6:16 pm
First, quitting tv is an admirable thing to try. I say ‘try’ because the doing is much harder. Read my post Children’s Television Workshop - Babysitter, Teacher, Secret Lover….
Second, there is a broader definition of autism these days. Nowadays, autism is a broad term for many mental & learning disabilities that go by a dozen or so names.
Back in the ’60s & ’70s, they just called you slow.
Have you read Be a Good Dad? He has a child with autism and talks about it quite often. I told him he should change his URL to ‘HowToBeaGreatDad.com’.
All that being said, less tv is ALWAYS better.
I think everything should be done with reason.
Mine watches TV since she was a baby einstein baby and I have to say
that with all due respect to the academic researchers, she grows wonderfully, have a very rich imagination, love to “read”, dance, sing and watch tv.
She learned Spanish from Dora, Imagination from Sesame Street and much much more.
It’s also a way for us to put Hebrew into her - u should the little communist walks around the house with the Israeli Flag
but, good luck on your try
I have a 16-year-old autistic niece. Very sad situation.
But when my son was born, all I heard from my mom and sister for THREE FREAKIN’ YEARS was “Watch for signs of autism!” and “Why’s he doing that? You should have him tested for autism!”
We became quite paranoid about it because of my mom and sister. Thank goodness he was okay, despite the early TV viewings of Teletubbies and Blue’s Clues.
Later, when my daughter was born we told my mother to knock it off with the autism thing. No more sleepless nights and stomach aches at every little odd thing she did.
Wow, dude. I never heard about that correlation before. I’d read studies saying that there was no benefit to having kids watch television before the age of 2 but I’d never seen a link to autism before. It’s ironic. Our daughter is 2 and it’s only recently (and with great reluctance) that I’ve allowed her to watch television. For her first year, I was adamant about no TV exposure. Then, i started introducing Sesame Street gradually. However, I’m still pretty adamant about keeping a tight rein on it. The ironic thing? I’m a fucking TV junkie. If they ever find out that adult TV exposure can cause autism, I’m going to be fucking Rainman.
I’m always wary of studies like this. I think it matters what the context of the program is rather than just “watching TV”.
In another words, I think having a kid watching “Family Guy” causes autism. There could be a study somewhere reinforcing that somewhere…
I saw this research, and was going to do a post on it, but I was too worried I’d “curse” myself by doing so.
As for football — I wouldn’t worry about it. I watch hockey all the time (luckily, they start at night, so she doesn’t see much before bedtime) and my daughter (2 yrs old) just says, “hockey goal!” every couple of minutes, then, after finding out there’s been no “hockey goal”, she loses interest.
Hey. One query - I didn’t read the research in detail but it strikes me as a flaw that work on styles of viewing wasn’t looked at - just raw, uncontextualised (in a local sense) empirical data.
What I mean is, if you watch a programme with a child, ask questions about what is going on, imitate the gestures and activities of the presenters of characters - and the better programmes (BBC Cbeebies is noted for its focus on active viewing; Dora is another example), the experience of viewing is going to be very different from parking the child in front of it for an hour or two. Of course, that needs to be seen in the context that the idea of lack of parental interaction in general as a factor doesn’t have much support (according to the journals/organisations I was trawling).
One thing I did learn is how complex a set of symptons and behaviours autism is. So far, dudelet seems to be developing free of the major signs that would suggest Aspergers or Autism.
And there are occasions when a bit of time spent as a family of potatoes is just what everyone needs…
Hmmmm, so that’s why NBC is tweaking Veggie Tales.
Before you get too deeply sold on the TV/ASD correlation:
http://autismbulletin.blogspot.com/2006/10/this-just-in-news-moves-fast-autism.html
Thanks, Two Busy.
The problem I have is this - his post just basically just says that their research is inconclusive (and I’m never happy when someone attacks the person (”Economists?”) instead of the idea. It’s always a bad way to start an argument.)
Since we continue to not know the truth about what really does cause autism, why not play it safe and cut off TV… Just. In. Case.
L.A. Toddler has asked for TV every night this week and we’ve said no. 30 seconds later, we’re playing with her toys and have an all-around great time. It’s like saying someone is too rich or too beautiful… “So, that’s a problem?”
Look, we don’t drink the milk with cow growth hormones. Is there evidence it causes a problem? Mmmm, I don’t think so. But do you really, REALLY want to be one of the statistics when they FINALLY figure out that it does have harmful effects?
In the case of autism, I will play it better-safe-than-sorry because no one truly knows what causes it - until they do, my child will not be a possible statistic. It seems pretty easy to me.
Thanks to everyone who has replied, too!
The # of televisions in homes has increased since the 70’s, true. But, so has the number of kids who have dads who blog! Coincidence? dun dun dunnnnnnn!
;)
I’m all for limiting the amount of time my daughter watches TV whether there is a link to autism or not… Aside from the worry this study could cause in parents (”oh no! is it already too late?? I knew I shouldn’t have let her watch one more episode of Spongebob!!”), convincing parents to have their kids watch a little less TV might possibly be a good thing.
I think his rationale in pointing out that this theory was developed by economists is more a matter of field of expertise than personal attack. Given the (basically) epidemic nature of the condition - and the fact that its mechanism of action and causation (whether environmental, genetic, a combination of the two or something completely different) is unknown and/or unproven at this point - it can be very tempting to buy into a rational-sounding but scientifically unproven explanation.
That’s not to say that TV definitively isn’t the cause (or, for that matter, that there aren’t other perfectly sound reasons for choosing not to let your kid watch TV), or that the theory isn’t worthy of futher study and data analysis to determine if and how its environmental ubiquity in most homes (or that of PCs, come to think of it) might somehow be irrevocably correlated with the onset of autism in toddlers.
But what should be kept in mind - and I think this guy’s post is trying to say - is that, at its basis, autism is a neurological condition. And to presume some kind of causational relationship between home electronics and the enormous range of behavioral, sociological, linguistic and (sometimes) physical manifestations of the autism spectrum without taking any kind of neurobiological data into account is, at best, premature.
In other words, it’s an easy answer… but it may not necessarily be the right one.
You’re right. It’s an easy answer. And what’s painfully obvious is that I’m not a doctor or scientist (or an economist!
But if there is something that I CAN do, I’d like to try. Rather than wait for the results, if there’s some single act that I can perform, whether it’s right or wrong, and it’s NOT harmful… I’ll be a theorist’s trained monkey. I’m not proud…
Like I said, if I do limit or remove the electronic viewing and she doesn’t develop any signs or symptoms of any neurological disorder… I’ll be ecstatic. Even if I don’t carry any biological traits for the disorders, I’ll feel better. Even if she’s mad at me for a little while for cutting off her TV viewing, I think I can live with that.
I wouldn’t dream of arguing against that.
I saw this article, and I have to admit I was a little skeptical. I’m not too familiar with autism and it’s causes, but I would guess that if it was caused by TV viewing then we would have a much, much larger epidemic on our hands. I tend to think that maybe it’s a combination of things including genetics, and that something like TV may exacerbate it.
Although, less TV viewing is beneficial in other ways, so why not err on the side of caution? If they had said consumption of Cheetos, or skipping baths, or a correlation to the number of glasses of wine the children had witnessed their mothers drink, I would be sweating bullets right now.
Just in: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1548682,00.html