One important difference between interactive play in the 3-dimensional world and watching a 2-dimensional TV screen is that when engaged in play, the child is the one making all the decisions: about what to play with next, how to manipulate toys, what they will create, what they will imagine, and how they will interact with the environment. Through this process they are learning about their world--they decide which objects in their environment are important to pay attention to and which are less important, and they make their own decisions about how to interact with the environment. This decision making is key to the optimal development of the cerebral cortex, especially in early childhood.
On the other hand, when engaged in TV watching, the producers of that program have decided what the child is supposed to notice by deciding what object comes next on the screen, while the child passively follows, their higher brain functions lulled to sleep while the low brain is mesmerized with images. What's worse, too often those images come very fast. The time it takes for a brain to process new information is five to seven seconds, but in many programs a new object emerges every two to three seconds, demanding that the childs' focus moves to the new object before it has had time to process the previous one.
The national average for television viewing is 4 to 5 hours every day. Every hour spent in this way is time that children are not moving their bodies, which is also essential for brain development. It is time spent not making their own decisions, and not engaging the real, tangible, 3-dimensional world they live in.
One thing parents can do in addition to limiting or eliminating television viewing for little ones is to watch with the children and pause to discuss what's happening, ask questions, and label images with the accompanying vocabulary. Asking children to anticipate what will happen next also taps into higher level thinking processes. This insures that proper processing of the images is happening and provides more time necessary for children to think about what is occuring on the screen.
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Nice article, Sheila. Our kids used to get about 2 hours a week. Now the woman who watches them while I work lets the boys watch Barney when they wake up from their nap. In addition to the passivity of television, I'm concerned about the influence of the images in commercials. PBS is a good way to get around the t.v. they do watch. When Emma was 4 she worked on a single project, without stopping, for 4 hours. It was a craft she was making. The only reason she stopped at 4 is because I told her I needed the table for dinner. I think limiting her television has enhanced her ability to focus.
Thanks for your blog, Sheila, I'm enjoying reading it.
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