The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a stern warning to parents: TV is bad for kids under 2. And not just some TV shows, all moving screens with pictures from the football game playing in the living room to the Youtube clip buffering on your iPad.
A statement on the AAP website stops short of calling the glowing moving images on your iPhone that transfix your baby what it sometimes appears to be: kid-crack.
“The Academy is concerned about the impact of television programming intended for children younger than age two and how it could affect your child’s development,” says a statement on the AAP website. “Pediatricians strongly oppose targeted programming, especially when it’s used to market toys, games, dolls, unhealthy food and other products to toddlers. Any positive effect of television on infants and toddlers is still open to question, but the benefits of parent-child interactions are proven.
The AAP suggests that parents limit their kids’ media intake, not just with television programming but with apps and websites, at least for the first two years. But they don’t give official guidelines as to where the tipping point lies: is three hours a week of three hours a day of Dora the Explorer going to hold up your child from learning the alphabet?
All of it is a crime according to the APP. Time in front of the tube is time wasted, according to the report. For every hour in front of the TV, a child loses 50 minutes communicating with a parent. The figures and facts may be accurate, but how realistic is living in screen-less world in 2011?
How much TV does you child watch ? Do you limit their TV time ?
Source: Yahoo shine
