Children need time to be unplugged

This column was originally published in the News & Record on September 20, 2006

Throughout my childhood, my family took twice-yearly road trips to visit relatives in Philadelphia. Sing-along tapes and a pile of toys and books kept us mostly occupied, though I’m sure we tried our mother’s patience plenty.

Recently, my sister, Rachel, made the trip again with our mother, this time accompanied by my nephews, six-year-old Tate and three-year-old Carr. Miracle of modern technology that it is, Rachel also brought her portable DVD player; of the 16-hour round trip, the kids watched maybe four hours of movies.

Not bad considering that a quick drive down Battleground Avenue will attest that many parents think their kids can’t make the trip to the grocery store without an episode of Dora the Explorer.

I don’t have kids but my 17 years as a doting older sister, then aunt, have given me an idea of the patience necessary to handle the often-impulsive demands of kids, and therefore the appeal of a constant TV buffer. But a recent NPR report made me wonder if we haven’t taken the buffer too far.

Pay-per-view grocery carts are popping up in Atlanta Wal-Marts and grocery stores. For a mere dollar, parents can seat their kids in a roaming room with a steady stream of their choice of kids’ programming. The only people more thrilled than the kids are the parents who no longer have to have the obligatory mid-store arguments about Sugar-Coated Mouth-Zinger cereal or the new Diva Dancer Barbie.

Having recently spoken with Rachel about the prevalence of television in modern childhoods, I sent her a link to the report; she replied with an email laden with caps lock and exclamation marks.

“Yes, shopping with kids is hard. Yes, driving with kids is hard sometimes. Yes, TV tends to minimize fighting between sibs and between parents & kids,” she wrote. “But that's part of growing up - learning boundaries - interacting in some way with the world around you to figure out how you impact it - using your imagination - being bored - THINKING.”

The dozens of studies exploring the negative impact of television on kids makes writing about it a chore of what to exclude rather than what to include.

Television occupies the time that most kids would have otherwise spent riding bikes, playing in the backyard or throwing twigs into the neighborhood creek. Coupled with the junk food ads so prevalent during the breaks in kids’ programming, this abundant inert time has been implicated in the growing obesity epidemic.

Of course, rides in cars and grocery carts are already inert time for kids, but as Rachel points out, it is only physically inert time. Staring out a car window is prime time for an active mind to create stories, plan bead-art projects or, gasp, talk with family.

Moreover, unsupervised, uncensored television time opens the door for kids to interpret messages without the guidance of parental insight. While Tom smashing Jerry with a fire poker is funny to those of us who understand the difference between animation and reality, to kids it could be frightening or, worse yet, a funny and seemingly risk-free prank to pull on a sibling.

Neither Rachel nor I believe that television is totally without merit; shows like Popular Mechanics for Kids offer educational lessons, and mindless entertainment provides time to unwind and laugh. But, as Rachel sums it up, “Parents need to moderation AND good sense with TV… by picking age appropriate shows and talking to kids about what they are seeing.”