Children and Media: Parental Discretion Advised

Children who watch higher amounts of television are at greater risk for negative outcomes such as obesity and attention deficit. Also, greater exposure to sex and alcohol in the media is associated with a greater likelihood that teens will act out those behaviors.

  • Television and Teen Pregnancy. Teens exposed to higher levels of sexual content on television are more likely to become pregnant. Teens who viewed more sexual content were twice as likely to become pregnant during a three-year period as their peers who had lower levels of exposure to sexual content.1
  • Television and Children’s Attention Deficit. The amount of time preschoolers spent watching television was correlated with the likelihood of developing serious attention problems. An increase of 2.91 hours per day watching television at age one was associated with a 28-percent increase in the likelihood that a child will have problems paying attention at age seven.2
  • Television and Children’s Cognitive Development. Television viewing in preschool is associated with lower cognitive ability in first and second grade. Television viewing among children younger than three years old was associated with less cognitive development and lower scores on reading recognition and comprehension, as well as lower mathematics scores for those in lower-income households, when the children were six and seven years old.3
  • Alcohol Ads and Teen Substance Abuse. For adolescents, viewing alcohol ads on television is associated with a greater likelihood of substance abuse. An increase in seventh-graders’ viewing alcohol commercials on television was associated with an increase the likelihood that, as eighth graders, they would drink beer, wine, and liquor; and drink at least three alcoholic drinks in one session.4
  • Television Viewing and Obesity. Girls who spend more time watching television are at an increased risk for obesity. Compared with peers who watched less than two hours of television a day, girls who viewed an average of two or more hours of television each day were more likely to become overweight, to have a higher body mass index, and higher percentage of body fat.5
  • Parental Monitoring and Television Viewing. Teens whose parents monitor television viewing are less likely to be sexually active. The more often parents watched television with their teens and the more they limited television viewing, the less likely adolescents were to have sex.6
  • Parental Discussion about Media and Teenage Drinking. Parental discussion of media messages plays an important role in teenage drinking. Among a sample of central Californian high school students, those whose parents positively reinforced television messages were more likely to associate benefits with drinking alcohol, perceive that “TV is a realistic source of information,” and want to be like media portrayals compared to peers of parents who did not positively reinforce TV messages. In contrast, high school students of parents who countered TV messages were less likely to associate positive benefits with drinking. In turn, students who associated positive benefits with drinking or those who perceived TV as a realistic source of information were more likely to drink alcohol compared to peers who did not exhibit either characteristic.7
  • Home Environment and Television Viewing. Eating in front of the television is associated with more TV watching for children. Fourth graders who spent more meals in front of the television or those who had a television set in their bedrooms increased, on average, their television viewing over the next four years.8
  • Parental Regulations of Children's Television Viewing. Overall, children of parents who encouraged television viewing watched the most, while children of parents who regulated television viewing watched the least amount of television. Children whose parents encouraged television viewing watched, on average, more informative types of children’s programs as well as more general-audience types of programs such as news, sports, comedy, action adventure and variety game than children whose parents did not encourage television viewing. In contrast, children whose parents regulated their television viewing watched, on average, less entertainment types of children’s programs (but not informative types of children’s programs) as well as less generalaudience types of programs such as comedy, action adventure and variety game.9
  • Adolescents’ Media Use and Parental Presence. Parental religiosity was linked to adolescent social responsibility directly as well as indirectly through authoritative parenting.10

Footnotes

  1. Anita Chandra, Steven C. Martino, Rebecca L. Collins, Marc N. Elliott, Sandra H. Berry, David E. Kanouse, and Angela Miu, “Does Watching Sex on Television Predict Teen Pregnancy? Findings from a National Longitudinal Survey of Youth,” Pediatrics 122, No. 5 (November 2008): 1047-1054.
  2. Dimitri A. Christakis, Frederick J. Zimmerman, David L. DiGiusepe, and Carolyn A. McCarty, “Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children,” Pediatrics 113, No. 4 (April 2004): 708-713.
  3. Frederick J. Zimmerman and Dimitri A. Christakis, “Children’s Television Viewing and Cognitive Outcomes,” Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 159, No. 7 (July 2005): 619-625.
  4. Alan W. Stacy, Jennifer B. Zogg, Jennifer B. Unger, and Clyde W. Dent, “Exposure to Televised Alcohol Ads and Subsequent Adolescent Alcohol Use,” American Journal of Health Behavior 28, No. 6 (November 2004): 498-509.
  5. Kirsten K. Davison, Simon J. Marshall, and Leann L. Birch, “Cross- Sectional and Longitudinal Association Between TV Viewing and Girls’ Body Mass Index, Overweight Status, and Percentage of Body Fat,” The Journal of Pediatrics 149, No. 1 (July 2006): 32-37.
  6. Melina Bersamin, Michael Todd, Deborah A. Fisher, Douglas L. Hill, Joel W. Grube, and Samantha Walker, “Parenting Practices and Adolescent Sexual Behavior: A Longitudinal Study,” Journal of Marriage and Family 70, No. 1 (February 2008): 97-112.
  7. Eric W. Austin, “The Role of Interpretation Processes and Parental Discussion in the Media’s Effects on Adolescents’ Use of Alcohol,” Pediatrics 105, No. 2 (February 2000): 343-349.
  8. Brian E. Saelens, “Home Environmental Influences on Children’s Television Watching from Early to Middle Childhood,” Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 23, No. 3 (June 2002): 127-132.
  9. Michelle St. Peters, “Television and Families: What Do Young Children Watch with Their Parents,” Child Development 62, No. 6 (December 1991): 1409-1423.
  10. Marjorie Linder Gunnoe, E. Mavis Hetherington, and David Reiss, “Parental Religiosity, Parenting Style and Adolescent Social Responsibility,” Journal of Early Adolescence 19, No. 2 (May 1999): 199-225. This product