News roundup

Spare the television and improve the child

Scott Gottlieb New York

Reducing the amount of time that primary school children spend watching television and playing video games can make them less aggressive towards their peers, a new study has reported.

Although many studies have correlated exposure to violent media with aggressive behaviour in children, the researchers say that theirs is the first to show that such behaviour can be unlearned by reducing the exposure.

In the study the researchers, led by Dr Thomas Robinson, assistant professor of paediatrics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, looked at 225 third and fourth grade children (9 and 10 year olds) at two similar public elementary schools in San Jose, California. The schools were selected because they were in the same district and had similar academic and sociodemographic factors. The children’s ages, the number of television sets and video game units in the home, and the number of children with a television in their bedroom were also similar (Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 2001;155:17-23).

At one school 120 participants received no intervention and served as a control group. At the other, 105 children received 18 lessons, 30 to 50 minutes long, over six months on reducing the use of television, videos, and video games.

The children were challenged to abstain from watching television for 10 days, and then to watch no more than seven hours a week. Households involved also had their televisions hooked up to a device that could prevent the set from being turned on if the child exceeded a limit that parents were encouraged to establish. The children were also taught to become more selective in their viewing and game choices and to advocate reduced use of television, videos, and video games to friends and family members.

At the outset, the young people reported an average of about 15.5 hours of television viewing weekly, 5 hours of watching videos, and 3 hours of playing video games. The overall time fell by about 30% by the end of the course, to an average of about 9 hours of television viewing, 3.5 hours of videos, and 1.5 hours of video games.

Results were measured through questionnaires, in which children were asked to rate their classmates’ aggressiveness at the beginning and end of the study, identifying such things as who started fights or used aggressive language. In addition, researchers randomly selected 60% of the children from each school for direct observation during breaks from lessons.

Peer reports of aggression were similar at the two schools at the outset, but in the intervention group, reports of aggression had dropped by 25% by the end of the study. Children in the intervention group were also involved in 50% fewer incidents of verbally aggressive behaviour in the playground than the children at the control school. Both boys and girls benefited from the intervention curriculum, and the most aggressive students experienced the greatest drop in combativeness.

"Kids spend more time watching television than doing any other thing besides sleeping," said Dr Robinson. "It’s not unreasonable to expect that this will translate into large impacts on their health and behaviour over time."

The authors looked at only two schools and did not assess whether there was any violence in what the children watched. Dr Robinson said that he was testing the programme’s effects in a larger study—of about 900 children at 12 schools—which will follow the children for longer to see if these patterns persist.