

Do television and electronic games predict children’s psychosocial adjustment? - wozmirek
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2013/02/21/archdischild-2011-301508.full.pdf

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tokenadult
One of the most important sections of any published research study to look at
is the methods section. Here is the methods section from the linked paper:

"Methods Typical daily hours viewing television and playing electronic games
at age 5 years were reported by mothers of 11 014 children from the UK
Millennium Cohort Study. Conduct problems, emotional symptoms, peer
relationship problems, hyperactivity/inattention and prosocial behaviour were
reported by mothers using the Strengths and Difﬁculties Questionnaire. Change
in adjustment from age 5 years to 7 years was regressed on screen exposures;
adjusting for family characteristics and functioning, and child
characteristics."

So all the data here were gathered by self-reports from the children's
mothers. One of the first things to do to see if these results replicate in
another sample is to gather data the next time by third-party observers. How
much does a mother's estimate of how much screen time a child has differ from
an observation by an objective observer? How much does an objective observer's
observation of a child's behavior differ from the mother's self-report? I'd
want to know details like that before drawing any particular conclusion about
the facts of the world from this interesting study kindly submitted here.

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bunderbunder
Sadly, I don't think a study like that is likely to happen. How many families
are willing to have someone hang around in their house 24/7 in order to
monitor their child's viewing habits? How many research institutions can
afford such a thing?

As far as drawing conclusions, I'm not sure it's necessary to throw the baby
out with the bathwater here. Self-reporting does tend to be inaccurate in
terms of absolute numbers. But as long as it tends to be accurate in relative
terms - that is, that if people who say their child watches more TV tend to
have children who actually do watch more TV - then we can draw relative
conclusions. And the key takeaway points from this paper are still useful
information even when you take the absolute numbers involved with a grain of
salt. Simply knowing that TV viewing time is positively correlated with
behavioral problems may not be a crystal-clear picture of the situation, but
it's still useful knowledge for a parent.

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pbhjpbhj
> _How many families are willing to have someone hang around in their house 24
> /7 in order to monitor their child's viewing habits?_ //

That's hardly required. An app installed on tablets or face recognition on a
kinect-type device or webcam can monitor screen usage and be automated.
Initially it's enough to show whether any sub-category of screen-bearing
device is being reported correctly. TV is probably the easiest to monitor and
could well be done using a relatively inexpensive "bug" stuck on the wall.

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bippi
Anecdotal note: Our son wanted to watch Thomas the Train. The CGI version. We
noticed that while he watched a ton of Team Umizoomi, some Paw Patrol and
Diego... Thomas seemed to follow right along with some incredibly new
behavioral issues. He was just a little badger.

We cut-off Thomas. Within 2 days, he was much easier to get along with. The
books and toys were fine, just not that one show. His daycare said, "Yeah,
he's been tons better. I didn't want to believe you, but he's had no timeouts
and he's been much nicer."

Our running theory is that he was paying just enough attention to see when the
trains were bad, but not enough attention to see how the bad behavior turned-
out for the trains.

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pla3rhat3r
Our 8 year old Son is mildly Autistic. We try to limit the amount of iPad,
Wii, DS, etc time he has but never really thought about how much TV he should
be watching. It's not that we allow him a lot of time but we've noticed he'll
memorize lines from shows and then reenact them. That wouldn't be a problem if
is wasn't something like Uncle Grandpa or Adventure Time. Reading through this
article I'll be thinking twice about how much TV time we give him.

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lotharbot
My mildly autistic 3 year old son quotes/reenacts My Little Pony. It's much
healthier than Uncle Grandpa.

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kubiiii
Gamer since age of 8 here. Title might be a little too optimistic. What kind
of TV programs? What kind of games? Games were most probably suitable for
children because they are bought by parents, but what about TV programs if not
proprely supervised?

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pbhjpbhj
I think you're on to something there. That in this age group games used are
more likely to be parent vetted whilst TV may be assumed to be benign and so
subject to less scrutiny?

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jpasmore
I think you'd have to understand if there is a parallel behavior with parents
who allow children to watch significant TV -- do these parents not read to
kids, not talk to them, etc -- TV could be a symptom of other behavior which
is influencing child,

That said, I do think TV and Games influence behavior...

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quantgenius
Actually this study doesn't seem to show that games are harmless. The
magnitude and variability of the effect for both TV time and games is similar.
There are however far fewer children in the study playing games than watching
TV. So the coefficient is statistically significant for TV but not for games.
It seems it would be more accurate to state that all kinds of screen time have
small negative effects on behavior but the effects of video game time should
be more carefully studied in a follow up study with more subjects.

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dschiptsov
No. A game itself predict nothing. But time wasted on them does or inability
to cope with reality and escapism into imaginary worlds.

WoW is harmless, while the time wasted on it cannot be taken back or spent on
acquiring valuable social experience or self-development.

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pbhjpbhj
> _WoW is harmless_

Citation please.

I play FPS shooters sometimes, it affects my behaviour and I'm a [reasonably!]
well-adjusted adult. Perhaps I'm an outlier with undiagnosed mental issues but
I'm not inclined to be convinced by such assertions.

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knackernews
Wow, 21% of households didn't have a father present. That's sad.

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wozmirek
Sadly, I've found it on rockpapershotgun. Sadly, for I bet no big media would
ever get interested in this.

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andylei
interesting that television predicts "conduct problems" but video games do not

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JoeAltmaier
tl;dr: not much

