All I Want for Christmas Is....Everything

My kids wrote their letters to Santa today.  There was no pussyfooting, no sucking up.  They cut right to the chase.  Here's my 8-year-old's letter:

And my 6-year-old's:

And my 19-month-old's, courtesy of his older sister:

I think they're trying to tell me something.

It's easy to assign the lion's share of blame for the commercialization of Christmas; all you have to do is reach for the remote.  There's no question that T.V. advertising triggers the whiny demands.  Every published study on this topic has noted a correlation between T.V. viewing frequency and purchase requests for food and toys in children.  No surprise here -- why would companies spend billions of dollars producing commercials if they didn't work? 

My favorite studies were conducted in the U.K., analyzing the content of letters to Father Christmas (Santa, to us Yanks) and surveying children and their parents about their viewing habits.  The investigators also reviewed toy commercials on children's networks for the 6 weeks leading up to the holiday season.  One of the more remarkable findings was that toy ads ran an average of 33 times an hour -- and this figure doesn't even include ads for food or other shows. The first study, conducted in 3- to 6-year olds (who were allowed to dictate or draw their letters), found that the number of items requested went up with the amount of T.V. viewing.  There was no associated increase in the request for advertised brands, probably because the children were too young to recall specific names.  The study was then repeated in 6- to 8-year-olds, and some interesting trends emerged.  For one thing, the kids got greedier, with the average number of demands increasing from 3 to 5 items.  (I was relieved to discover my kids are no more spoiled than the average brat.)  For another, the more T.V. a kid watched, the more advertised brands he or she would request.  Girls were more susceptible to brand-name recognition (with Bratz dolls being the most popular), though peer pressure may also have played a role, as the letters were written in a classroom setting.

Dealing with the deluge of requests around Christmas is annoying, but can advertising actually impact the moral development of children?  Five studies have looked at whether T.V. viewing is associated with materialism.  Greed was measured by asking children to agree or disagree with statements such as "Money can buy happiness" or "My dream in life is to be able to own expensive things," or by having them choose between toys or friends.  Four out of the five studies found significant correlations between the amount of T.V. watched and materialistic values.

So what's the best way to grapple with the gimmes?  The "duh" answer is to ban the kiddos from watching any T.V., at least from November onward, but most parents aren't willing to go to such extremes.  You could outlaw advertising aimed towards children, which is what Sweden does* -- but we all know that industry would never allow that to happen in the States.

Believe it or not,  a randomized, control trial exists to answer this question.  In this study, third- and fourth-graders in one school were randomized to a media reduction program, while kids at another school served as the control.  The kids in the intervention group received 18 sermons on reducing T.V., videotape and video game use, after which they were challenged to go media-free for 10 days.  Incredibly, two-thirds of the kids succeeded with this challenge.  The parents were then given an electronic T.V. time manager that restricted usage to 7 hours a week.  Only 40% complied with this portion, possibly because Dad (or, not to be sexist, Mom) wasn't willing to give up his ESPN. The kids and parents were asked at the beginning and end of the study about the number of requests for toys seen on T.V. in the previous week.  While there were no differences in toy requests at the beginning of the study, by the end, the kids in the intervention group had reduced their number of demands by 70%.

While it's unlikely that schools will implement this intensive curriculum, most parents could aim for the 7 hours a week T.V. budget.  I love the idea of installing a T.V. time manager, since kids know that it's useless arguing with a computer. Another strategy is to watch T.V. with your kids and talk to them about the commercials.  Over half of 6- to 8-year-olds in the Santa letters study couldn't explain what an advertisement was.  Studies have shown that talking to your kids about commercials mitigates their insidious influence.

The kids don't know it yet, but maybe Santa will surprise them with a T.V. time manager.  That's what happens when you try to shake down the big guy.  In the meantime, anyone know where I can buy some fake drool?**

*In fact, in a small substudy, Swedish children requested fewer items in their Father Christmas letters than did children from the U.K. 
**My daughter's explanation: "It's just like fake vomit -- you can use it to gross people out!"  Not sure why JoJo would need any, since he produces copious amounts of the real stuff.

The AAP Scolds Us -- Again

The American Academy of Pediatrics released an updated policy statement this week on media use in children under 2, and no surprise, they continue to "discourage" it.  This, despite their acknowledgement that "no longitudinal study has determined the long-term effects of media use" in this age group.  (Read my earlier post on the supposed harms of baby videos.)  I read the statement carefully, and it is, shall we say, a quixotic document.  Here's one helpful tidbit on how to watch a toddler without resorting to television: "Simply having a young child play with nesting cups on the kitchen floor while a parent prepares dinner is useful playtime."

The last time I tried that with JoJo, he pulled a bottle of beer out of the minifridge and smashed it on the floor.  So even if T.V. is decreasing the number of folds in his brain, at least I don't have to worry about an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba ending in a trip to the E.R.  Sometimes I think that the AAP just needs to get off its high horse and live the life of a real parent.

Speaking of high horses, some years ago, my 3-year-old son ran up to me as I walked through the front door and gabbled, "Mommy Mommy!  Daddy was watching this T.V. show and a man was in bed and the man looked at his hand and his hand was wet and his hand was covered in blood and he looked up and there was a HORSE'S HEAD!"  I rounded on Rick, "You let J.J. watch The Godfather?!"  He  shrugged and said, "I didn't know he was paying attention."

No more Mafia movies for my kids.

Just adorable, knitted horses' heads.

That, my readers, is an example of background television, and the AAP statement devoted a special section to this form of media exposure.  Foreground television, such as Baby Einstein, is designed with children in mind.  Background T.V. is not designed for kids, but they might be exposed to it for many more hours than foreground T.V.  The question is whether background T.V. affects child development in any way.  The AAP highlighted two studies suggesting negative outcomes, so let's take a close look at these.

In one study, investigators looked at whether the game show Jeopardy affected the solitary play behavior of 1- to 3- year olds.  (I guess the Netflix queue for Godfather was too long.*)  As expected, when the T.V. was on, the toddlers didn't pay much attention to it, spending only 5% of their time with their eyes on the screen.  Correspondingly, the amount of play decreased by 5% with the T.V. on.  The authors made much of the fact that although the quantity of play didn't decrease substantially, play was interrupted more frequently, with play episodes lasting about 30 seconds less with the T.V. on.  They also noticed that "focused" play episodes (defined among other things as the child having a "serious facial expression with furrowed brow") were also shorter -- by 5 seconds.

A similar study, performed by the same group, looked at the influence of background T.V. on parent-child interactions.  When the T.V. was on, parents interacted less with their kids, and the quality of their interactions suffered, with more absent-minded behaviors, such as grooming, and less imaginative play.  Finally, having the T.V. on also resulted in parents responding less to their toddlers' bids for attention.  I always knew my kids tune me out when the T.V. is on, but I guess I'm doing the same to them.

So what's the take home message about background T.V. in young children?  From a purely anecdotal point of view, I wouldn't recommend watching anything with Al Pacino in it while your kids are still awake.  From the evidence-based standpoint, the research is scant but generally shows negative short-term effects of uncertain importance.  How much T.V. is too much? Thirty-nine percent of parents say that the T.V. is on "constantly" in their household.  What the heck, I'm willing to go out on a limb** and say that's too much. 

*Although probably not anymore.  R.I.P., Quickster.  Yours was a short, sad, badly named life.

**I was going to write "stick out my neck," but I've already gone overboard with the decapitation allusions.  I don't want to beat a dead horse. 

Can the Idiot Box Make Your Baby Smarter?

Last week I wrote about a small study that looked at the effects of Spongebob on "executive function" in 4-year-olds.  While that was my most popular post to date -- apparently quite a few of you are fans of the phylum Porifera -- it barely tapped into the mountain of research on T.V. and kids. Today let's talk about whether Baby Einstein will, indeed, make your baby an Einstein.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of 2 not be exposed to any electronic screens, including T.V., computers and smartphones.  (As one reader asked, "Does that include Skype time with Grandma?"  There are probably no studies, but let's just stipulate that the AAP would allow that loophole.)  Practically speaking, there aren't too many 1-year-olds with the manual dexterity to play Angry Birds, so we'll stick to the studies on T.V. in the under-2 set.

First of all, do parents even follow the AAP guidelines?  One study, conducted five years after the recommendations were published, found that 18-month-olds watch an average of 2.2 hours of T.V. a day -- which means, of course that some really lazy parents let their toddlers watch 4 hours a day, to average out the TeleNazi parents who ban the boob tube altogether.  Of course, I'm not one to talk: my 18-month-old watches about an hour a day, more on weekends.

The amount of time babies watch T.V. has risen over the years, largely because there are now many programs developed specifically for the very young.  The blurb on my old copy of the immensely popular Baby Mozart DVD promises "countless hours of viewing and listening delight, coupled with meaningful learning....You can choose to expose your child to eight languages through the use of pictures, text and pronunciations by native speakers....study tracks are designed to develop vocabulary and reading skills."  The suggested viewing age?  1 to 36 months.

Then a 2007 study blew the creators' claims out of the water.  ("Associations between media viewing and language development in children under age 2 years.") It was a telephone survey of over a thousand parents of children ages 2 to 24 months, exploring possible associations between parental interaction, the type and amount of television exposure, and language development.  First, the good news:  daily reading resulted in a 3- to 4-word increase in vocabulary in 8- to 16-month-olds.  But if your baby watched either Baby Einstein or its chief competitor, Brainy Baby, he or she suffered an average 7- to 8-word decrease in vocabulary for every hour of video watched.  The study drew first blood, the lawyers started circling, and Disney offered a full refund to Baby Einstein customers.

So how might T.V. retard language acquisition in babies?  One theory is that babies simply don't learn concepts as well from video as they can from an equivalent live experience.  This "video deficit" has been verified in several laboratory studies.  Though this might explain why a video might not be educational, it doesn't explain the "dumbing down" effect.  Another possibility is that exposure to T.V. reduces parental interaction, which is highly correlated with language acquisition, as well as playing with toys, which also promotes learning.  And finally, remember that association doesn't prove causation.  Parents who spend less time with their babies, for whatever reason, may simply have the T.V. on all the time.

Of course, that one study didn't prove that all T.V. is bad for babies.  One better designed, prospective study had 51 families keep a log of what their 6- to 30-month-old children were watching.  ("Infants' and toddlers' television viewing and language outcomes.")  The investigators then tested the children's language skills every 3 to 6 months.  It turns out that what the toddlers watched was every bit as important as how much they watched.  Babies who watched Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer had a significant increase of 13 words above the average at 30 months, followed closely by those who watched Arthur and Clifford.  On the other hand, Barney and Teletubbies were negative influences, with about 10 fewer words.  Confirming what most parents have suspected all along: that being forced to listen to the cultish refrains of "I love you, you love me" destroys brain cells.  Intriguingly, Sesame Street did not seem affect vocabulary acquisition in toddlers, despite its well-documented benefits in older kids.

  
So the AAP's recommendation of absolutely no screen time for those under 2 is probably overreaching.  Even in the case of Baby Einstein, the saga isn't over.  The creators of the videos just won a settlement against the University of Washington, when they discovered that their 2007 study debunking their videos had a number of flaws.  For one thing, the investigators changed their outcomes midway through their study, a practice known as data dredging (essentially they were casting a wide net and seeing what turned up "statistically significant").  For another, by the time the children were 17- to 24-months, all the vocabulary deficits had disappeared.


Even though the jury is still out, it is pretty unlikely that these baby DVDs will turn my JoJo a genius.  So do I plan on getting a refund from Disney?  Not on your life.  Just because something isn't evidence-based doesn't mean I won't use it.  As un-educational as they may be, these DVDs sure are good babysitters, and let's face it, sometimes Mommy just needs a break.

Who Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea?

If you know the answer to that question, welcome to my world.  I was planning to blog about something "serious" today, but an article in my morning paper caught my eye: "SpongeBob in hot water from study of 4-year-olds."  A randomized, controlled trial on SpongeBob SquarePants?  How could I resist?  I found the study easily.  It was a free "early online release" from the venerable Pediatrics journal.  ("The immediate impact of different types of television on young children's executive function.")  Early release articles are typically trials that post such impressive results that they have to be published online immediately, to save as many lives as possible.  I guess the editors of Pediatrics felt that they had to put a grinding halt to the zombification of American 4-year-olds.

The researchers randomized sixty 4-year-olds to 9 minutes of SpongeBob, Caillou (the most boring educational cartoon ever produced; the only reason to watch is to learn how to pronounce "Caillou") or drawing.  They then had them take four different tests of "executive function," a fancy term for "more complicated decision-making."  One of these tests, for example, was the classic delay-of-gratification task, in which the child is told he could either have 2 marshmallows immediately, or 10 marshmallows in about 5 minutes.  The child is timed, and the longer he can hold off, the better he is at delaying gratification.  


SpongeBob was classified as being fast-paced, compared to the pokey pace of Caillou:  the scenes in SpongeBob shift every 11 seconds, compared to every 34 seconds in Caillou. The investigators hypothesized that watching a fast-paced cartoon would negatively affect the subjects' attention spans, and thus their executive functions, and they were right.  Here are how the three groups performed on their tests:*

Predictably, a spokesman from Nickolodeon skewered the study, saying "Having 60 non-diverse kids....watch 9 minutes of programming is questionable methodology and could not possibly provide the basis for any valid findings that parents could trust."  Hey, Nickolodeon, I'm sure you can always find some helpful legal advice from the folks at Phillip Morris!  Actually, I do think he has a point.  The study was small and only partially blinded, and the results may not pertain to older kids.  None of the subjects were tested before the videos to see what their baseline attention spans were.  Finally, the tests were performed immediately after the videos were shown, so even if the results are true, who knows if the negative effects are long-lasting?


The lead author did make a point which gave me pause: "I wouldn't advise watching such shows on the way to school or any time they're expected to pay attention or learn."  My kids watch not 9, but 30 minutes of SpongeBob every weekday -- before they leave for school.  Maybe I'll do their teachers a favor and detox them on Caillou. 


*HTKS, by the way, refers to "Head Toes Knees Shoulders."  I thought at first that they were making the kids run through the popular "Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes" song, but no.  Instead, kids were asked to touch their head when the instructor told them to touch their toes, and vice-versa, with increasingly confusing variations.  I'm pretty sure my scores would have been unplottably low, SpongeBob exposure or not.