Screen Time

"Pediatricians should urge parents to avoid television viewing for children under the age of 2 years," the recommendation said. "Although certain television programs may be promoted to this age group, research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical need for direct interactions with parents and other significant caregivers (e.g., child care providers) for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional and cognitive skills. Therefore exposing such young children to television programs should be discouraged."¹

You might think that statement would close the book on the issue. After all, when doctors tell us that our kids should take antibiotics, get vaccinated or see a specialist, the overwhelming majority of us comply. But in this case, parents seemed to wave away the recommendation, or not even know about it. In 2004, when I first became aware of the AAP's edict, conversations with parents on the playground and in playgroups led me to believe that it was having little effect. Even my children's pediatricians seemed less than inclined to push the recommendation—the waiting room featured a television set that was usually showing a Disney movie. Later data showed that my peer group was not the only one ignoring the advice; a survey conducted nationwide in 2005 by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that more than 60 percent of parents allow their children, ages 6 to 23 months, to be exposed to some TV or video media each day.²

I was one of them. My first daughter, Janelle, was born in April 2002, and a month later I was positioning her in front of the TV screen. She was a colicky baby. If she wasn't sleeping, she was usually fussing or crying. My husband and I tried everything—car trips, stroller rides, swaddling, massages, white noise, lullabies, pacifiers. I held her and rocked her for hours upon hours. Worried that there was something in my breast milk, I changed my diet. Our pediatrician wondered if she was suffering from acid reflux and prescribed Zantac. Little worked, and I was distraught. For a few months there were only two things that were guaranteed to provide fifteen minutes of calm. One was techno music by the pop singer Moby, cranked up to full volume on the stereo. The other was the Baby Einstein video called Baby Mozart. The video delivered an on-screen montage of toys and mobiles set against a white or black background. Janelle would stop fussing and turn her head to the screen. It was as if a switch had been turned off, halting the crying. A friend called the video "baby crack," and now I knew why.

This was before I learned about the AAP's no-TV recommendation, but even if I had known about it back then, I'm not sure it would have made a difference. All I cared about was that my baby seemed less unhappy. I wasn't going to question it. By the time Janelle was 6 months old, she had shaken the colic, and we were finally experiencing the joys of a happy child. With the benefit of hindsight and experience, I now think Janelle was experiencing acid reflux and digestion problems while also picking up on my own anxiety. But during those difficult six months, I was frankly too exhausted to understand that, let alone wonder what the TV might be doing to her.

Three years later, in April 2005, I attended the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Atlanta. The meeting draws child-development specialists from around the world, taking over two hotels for four days. It was there that I discovered just how much debate surrounds the AAP's advice against screen time. Whenever it was mentioned, some attendees would nod in agreement, while others would shake their heads. During one session, within a few minutes of a presenter concluding that the rule was "well taken," another stood up to declare that she disagreed with it.³ On both sides, panelists admitted that there was very little evidence of harm or benefit to screen time.

Scientists at other times and places have also questioned whether the AAP's recommendation was a smart move. Why draw such a hard line, they ask? Why put parents in a bind of guilt when so little is known? One evening after participating in a journalism conference about child development, I cornered Jack Shonkoff, the chair of a committee at the National Academies of Science that was charged with examining research on early child development. I asked him what he thought of the rule. "Shame on them," he said, shaking his head. To jump the gun by telling parents not to expose their babies to TV of any kind, he suggested, seemed to scare parents more than help them.

The AAP has been stunned by the criticism. "They've come back at us tooth and nail," said Donald Shifrin, one of the physicians who served on the AAP's media committee. "We thought it was a fairly benign thing to suggest." The recommendation, he explained, was designed with the interests of children in mind, children so young they can't speak for themselves. Decades of research had shown that what babies need most is attentive, loving care from their parents, and no research had ever pointed to any advantage in exposing children under age 2 to a television set. With little else to go on, the AAP decided to take a "caveat emptor" position, sounding a warning about electronic media that it hoped would cause parents to think harder about what, when and why they were watching with their young kids.

"We thought it was fairly safe," Shifrin continued. "We thought that was the end of the story. We figured, we don't have any research to show this, but who is going to argue with this recommendation? Well, it hit the front page of the New York Times and it was an unbelievable lightning rod. And we were like, are we missing something here? Explain this to me: You actually want youngsters in front of the television?"

Scientists admit that they are in the dark about much regarding brain development. The media's impact on the developing brain is not easy to measure—partly because much of the science on the brain is still so new. Consider this apology in From Neurons to Neighborhoods, a landmark book from 2000 about the science of early childhood development: "There is one very important context for early development that is not addressed in this report, namely the media.... We are only beginning to understand the repercussions of these trends for family life and child well-being. Our neglect of this topic is not a signal of any lack of concern; this is clearly an issue that warrants substantial attention."⁴ Not only is the science itself in its infancy, but media that is designed for babies has only truly arrived in the past decade. Scientists say they have not had enough time to see the long-term effects of these new products. The first Baby Einstein video came out in 1997, so most of the babies exposed to the DVDs have not even graduated from elementary school. And while the evening news, soap operas and sitcoms have been part of family routines for decades, increases in the amount and variety of media available to households have led child-development experts to raise alarms. Only in the last few years have scientists started to lobby aggressively for the funding to do large scientific studies of the media's effect on very young children.

But a good deal has come to light recently about brain development in young children generally. In the past decade, new research has persuaded parents, educators and politicians that the preschool years are very important for healthy brain development. An oft-quoted statistic is that 90 percent of a child's brain is formed before age 5.⁵ Cities and states across the country are calling for better post-natal care and more access to preschools so that children of all walks of life can reap the benefits of healthy brain growth—and the social, emotional and language development that goes with it.