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More than three hours of TV 'makes youngsters naughtier by the age of seven'
Children who watch TV for more than three hours a day are more likely to get into trouble, says new research.
It found viewing time among five-year-olds was linked to a higher risk of developing antisocial behaviour such as fighting and stealing by the age of seven.
But scientists at the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) said the extra risk was very small, and they found no impact on behaviour from time spent playing computer or electronic games.
Previous research suggested children spending more time in front of the TV have higher levels of behavioural and emotional problems.
In the US, paediatric guidelines recommend that total screen time should be limited to less than two hours per day of educational, nonviolent programmes. There are currently no formal guidelines in the UK.
Dr Alison Parkes, from the MRC/Chief Scientist Office Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, said the new study provided no evidence to support a maximum limit on TV viewing among young children, as emotional problems and attention span were unaffected.
She said: ‘Initially we found that watching more than three hours’ TV a day was associated with an increase in all problems, but this disappeared when we adjusted for other family influences. There was a small effect on one type of problem.
The drawback is we don’t know what the children were watching’ she added.
This study was the first in the UK to examine the relationship between screen use and change in mental health in young children over a two-year period.
The mothers of 11,014 children in the UK Millennium Cohort Study recorded typical hours of daily TV (including videos and DVDs) and typical hours of electronic game use at age five.
Mothers also completed questionnaires to report their children’s behavioural conduct, emotional symptoms, peer relationship problems, hyperactivity/inattention and ability to socialise at five and seven.
At age five, almost two-thirds of the children watched TV for between one to three hours daily, with 15 per cent watching for three hours or more. Only three per cent played electronic games for three or more hours daily.
Watching TV for three hours or more a day at age five predicted a 0.13 point increase on a 10-point scale in conduct problems by age seven compared to watching for under an hour.
Conduct problems included fighting, disobedience or stealing, but there was no link to other difficulties such as emotional problems or attention issues.
The study published online in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood relied on mothers’ reporting of screen time and it did not look at the content children watched on TV, or their exposure at weekends.
The researchers accounted for other factors such as household income, mothers’ education and employment status, parenting behaviours, the parent-child relationship and the child’s cognitive ability, sleep and physical activity.
Dr Parkes said: ‘Our work suggests that limiting the amount of time children spend in front of the TV is, in itself, unlikely to improve psychosocial adjustment.
‘In future it will be important to look at the influence of what children watch on TV, and the role of parents watching with their child and discussing content with them, as well as how much children watch.’ Other experts said the study showed there was ‘no cause for panic’ over children’s TV viewing habits.
Professor Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology, London School of Economics, said ‘At last we have a robust, longitudinal study that reveals a balanced picture. If five year olds watch more than three hours of television per day, research detects a small but noticeable negative effect on their conduct problems, though no effect on hyperactivity or emotional problems.
‘So, no cause for panic, but good reason to ask why some children spend so much time watching television - perhaps the pressures on their parents are too great, or perhaps there are no play spaces nearby? ‘Or maybe what matters is how children watch television: research also shows that children benefit the most from opportunities to talk, interact and play - and this can be done in front of the television as well as elsewhere.’
Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Professorial Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London, said ‘Children are born into a media-saturated world. Rather than focus on the possible adverse effects - and this study shows that they are tiny - it would be better to focus on the positive neural and cognitive changes that occur when the child actively engages with screen exposure.’
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