TV Watching Leads to Attention Deficit Disorder

[Poetic_Princess]

TV Watching Leads to Attention Deficit Disorder in Children
By Omarr Lee, Special to BET.com

Children who watch a lot of TV at an early age are at great risk of attention deficit disorder, a new study shows.


“The newborn brain develops very rapidly during the first two to three years of life,” says Dimitri A. Christakis, a researcher for the Children’s Hospital in Seattle, which conducted the study.

Christakis says that being stimulated too much during the period of early adolescence “can cause habits of mid that are ultimately deleterious.”

The programming of TV nowadays could change a child’s ordinary brain development, Christakis says.

“The truth is there are lots of reasons for children not to watch television,” he says.  For example, he says, studies show that children who watch more TV are more likely to gain weight and become aggressive because of violent programming.

Children between the ages of 1 and 3 who watch TV daily have a 10 percent greater chance of getting attention deficit disorder, researchers found.

Jennifer Kotler, assistant director of research at Seame Workshop, told The Washington Post that the negative impact of TV can be reduced if parents make sure their children watch more educational programming than anything else. They can also do a better job of turning the TV off, Kotler says.

[out_of_Zion]

Heard about this on the radio.  Interestingly, they said while it promotes ADHD, it also stimulates the brain.  They failed to explain that the stimulation of the brain is a positive thing...and even though one would expect the TV to have a deliterious effect on the kid, it is a way of providing them with adequate audio and video stimulation to develop their Weineke's area (language) and the back portion of the brain that controls image perception.   All in all, I'd say the benefits of kids being plugged in front of a TV outweigh the chance of ADHD.  ADHD actually can be beneficial, I think.  I say that from the stance that the kid is likely to be a quick thinker and intelligent one.  The issue is, of course, test taking and paying attention...

They labeled me ADHD in elementary, even though I don't think I was.  It was a behavioral problem that they blamed on ADHD as they do with many young ones.  All in all, every child is going to have to contend with their attention span which often vascillates according to their interest in the topic at hand anyway and I don't see ADHD as particuarly debilitating, save maybe in extreme cases.

[aleph]

the stimulatiuon that is television may accelerate understnading of language, but so little language is actually used on tv that i cannot think it a better method than even the simplest books, and the stimulation provides all of the content, allowing no more input from the audience than stringing together a story from a complicated series of auditory and visual shifts.  there is no imagination beyond what is shown before another image supplants it.  tv stimulation does not promote creative brain activity, but a receptive state of unrest.  i'm not sure how available it is, but i recently read a magazine ("shift") that spent most of an issue dissecting the role that tv plays in our society and individual life, and recommend that, as they did more research than i could hope to, everyone try to find a copy.  

[gman]

I grew up in Guyana in the 80s when nobody had TV except for a few folks with money who could afford a satellite dish. Me and my friends' time was spent reading, hanging out and playing cricket and making up our own games, awkwardly trying to talk to girls as we got older, exploring nature finding toads and snakes and watching horses give birth and ting, listening to stories from our grandparents (especially when the lights went out which was pretty much every night), etc. Even taking into account the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, and remembering less positive aspects like getting viciously caned by teachers for the most minor infractions, I still see it as the best childhood I could have possibly asked for. I wonder how different it would have been if we'd had TV, if I'd spent my afternoons seduced by its hypnagogic spell watching "Dallas", etc., instead of running around trying to catch grass snakes.
Guyana in the 80s had widespread poverty, simmering ethnic tensions between African and Indian, a corrupt government, etc... Guyana today has the same exact problems. (It's a different government and a legitimately elected one this time, but just as corrupt if not more so). But in the 80s it was a relatively peaceful society. People would leave their doors unlocked at night, allow their kids to roam free knowing that strangers would look out for them as if they were their own kids, and so on. Robberies would tend to be of the 'choke-and-rob' variety (ie, they choke you and then rob you and then let you go none the worse for wear apart from a sore throat and maybe some bruises if they decide to give you a kicking).
Nowadays it's heavy duty weaponry, drive-by shootings, people getting lick from stray shots. People getting kidnapped left and right, not even rich people, people like taxi drivers who the kidnappers figure their family loves them enough to scrape together all their life savings to get them back alive. Hovering on the verge of another all-out civil war between Black and Indian (the last one was in the 60s right before independence, when entire villages were massacred by both sides... people still feel they have scores to settle on both sides).
Now I'm not stupid enough to say that TV accounts for the difference between the 80s and now but I have to wonder if it didn't play a role. If growing up on a steady diet of shows parading all the luxury items folks could never legitimately afford, and all the gangster shows and cop shows and the amount of gun violence shown on TV... if any of that had an effect on a new generation some of whose members just don't give a f*** and are willing to kill any number of people and risk violent death themselves, in order to get their hands on enough cash to get those luxury items.
Anyway besides that I agree with aleph, it seems like nuff people I know who watch a lot of TV have a short attention span (not necessarily ADD, but like they can't concentrate for long on reading a book or what have you). And there's a lot of subliminal things they flash on there to get you to buy their products.
When I have children I don't think I will forbid them TV, cos then it'll be like a forbidden fruit to them and they'll just go and watch it at their friends' anyway, but I will limit their time in front of the tube, engage them in critical discussions about what they are watching, and make sure they always have plenty of alternative activities that exercise their brains and imaginations a lot more than passively receiving the images that mega-corporations want them to receive. Like READING which will become a dying skill if we don't watch out.

[Micah-EL-Layl]

Peace...
Poor lighting causes ADHD too...
also Poor diet is a cause of alot
of mental illnesses....
These doctors who give out these
mind altering drugs to children should
be put in an electric chair and fried....