Background TV Noise Bad for Kids

Posted by Susan Carney Jul 20, 2008

A recent study found that TV background noise may be disruptive to children's development. The study, done at the University of Massachussett, studied 50 kids between 1 and 3 years of age. The study was done in two trials: during one, kids played for an hour while a television set played in the background; during the other, the TV set was off.

The findings? “Background TV significantly reduced toy play episode length as well as focused attention during play. Thus, background television disrupts very young children's play behavior even when they pay little overt attention to it. These findings have implications for subsequent cognitive development.” (Schmidt, Pempek, Kirkorian, Lund and Anderson, The Effects of Background Television on the Toy Play Behavior of Very Young Children, Child Development, volume 79, issue 4, pp 1137-1151)

Considering how many kids play while TV’s are blaring in the background, the implications for this study are significant. Recently there’s been a lot of press about kids under 3 watching TV, and even that has been hard for a lot of parents to swallow. Now, things are even direr: don’t even let them in the same room with a TV!

But I have to wonder about this study in the context of older kids and teens, who are receiving visual and auditory stimulation from a variety of media (TVs, internet, cellphones, computer, ipods, etc.) Often, teens are electronically “multitasking,” or operating several types of electronics at the same time. Perhaps they are watching a movie on their computer and texting a friend at the same time. Or maybe they are burning a CD of their favorite tunes while watching TV AND researching the internet for a term paper. What kind of an impact does all of this have on THEIR attention and cognitive development?