ADHD and TV (The American Babysitter)

Study Links Attention Problems to Early TV viewing and Time magazine reports that the Baby Einstein videos actually retard language development:

Three studies have shown that watching television, even if it includes educational programming such as Sesame Street, delays language development...In fact, the watching probably interferes with the crucial wiring being laid down in their brains during early development."

As far as Christakis and his colleagues can determine, the only thing that baby videos are doing is producing a generation of overstimulated kids. "There is an assumption that stimulation is good, so more is better," he says. "But that's not true; there is such a thing as overstimulation." His group has found that the more television children watch, the shorter their attention spans later in life. "Their minds come to expect a high level of stimulation, and view that as normal," says Christakis, "and by comparison, reality is boring."


This growing evidence led the Academy to issue its recommendation in 1999 that no child under two years old watch any television. The authors of the new study might suggest reading instead: children who got daily reading or storytelling time with their parents showed a slight increase in language skills.

"the watching probably interferes with the crucial wiring being laid down in their brains during early development"

I have always said that the continual flashing of a TV screen screws up development of young minds but no one ever listens to me. And limiting TV to adult usage might hinder kids insatiable desire for more and more stuff so I doubt it will go away soon, even if sometimes it leads to prescription amphetamine use that then leads to a diagnosis of bipolar (The number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003)that leads to neuroleptics that leads to lifelong disability. Cause and effect is a bitch.