Toddlers who watched more TV than those who didn't are show to perform poorly compared to their counterparts in both math and vocabulary, according to new research from the University of Montreal.
Every hourly increase in daily television watching at 29 months of age is also associated with reduced classroom engagement (which is largely determined by attention skills) and physical prowess at kindergarten, according to Professor Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital.
"This is the first time ever that a stringently controlled associational birth cohort study has looked at and found a relationship between too much toddler screen time and kindergarten risks for poor motor skills and psychosocial difficulties, like victimization by classmates," Pagani said in the statement.
"These findings suggest the need for better parental awareness and compliance with existing viewing recommendations put forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The AAP discourages watching television during infancy and recommends not more than two hours per day beyond age 2. It seems that every extra hour beyond that has a remarkably negative influence."
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), they recommend parents to avoid allowing their infants from watching TV and toddlers should watch no more than two hours of TV a day.
The study included 991 girls and 1,006 boys in Quebec, whose parents reported their television viewing behaviour as part of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development.
Some of the children who participated in the study were two or even three standard deviations away from the average, and their kindergarten indicators were correspondingly worse than those who were one standard deviation away, researchers found.
This study only looks at the most common form of screen time, which is in the home. However, it may be an underestimate because many child care settings use television as an activity during care giving.
