Watching TV Could Delay Infants’ Language Development

How much TV do you think your baby watches? From Baby Einstein videos and Sesame Street to those screen on the headrests of your car, babies take in quites a few hours of boob tube. A new study now is looking at how much TV is bad for your baby because it reduces verbal interaction between parents and infants.

In a study of more than 300 children aged 2 months to 48 months, researchers found a decrease of 770 words for each additional hour of television watching. What’s worse? The more time spent watching television, the fewer vocalizations infants made when adults talked to them.

“Some of these reductions are likely due to children being left alone in front of the television screen, but others likely reflect situations in which adults, though present, are distracted by the screen and not interacting with their infant in a discernable manner,” wrote Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, of Seattle Children’s Hospital, and colleagues.

“At first blush, these findings may seem entirely intuitive. However, these findings must be interpreted in light of the fact that purveyors of infant DVDs claim that their products are designed to give parents and children a chance to interact with one another, an assertion that lacks empirical evidence,” they noted.

The researchers added that their results may help explain previous findings of a link between television viewing and delayed language development.

“Given the critical role that adult caregivers play in children’s linguistic development, whether they talk to their child while the screen is on may be critical and explain the effects that are attributed to content or even amount of television watched,” the team wrote. “That is, whether parents talk less (or not at all) during some types of programs or at some times of the day may be as important in this age group as what is being watched.”

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