Learning and the Media

I think it's really frustrating how many people sit their kid in front of the TV to watch Nickelodeon or PBS kids Sprout. It's all like "Hey look an electronic babysitter! we don't even have to pay it and we can have it every day!" and then they'll "justify" it by saying it's educational or whatever.

The dumbest thing is how people think Baby Einstein is educational even after so many studies have shown that it is in fact no good. In 2009 Disney even offered refunds to parents that bought Baby Einstein videos. If that's not a sign that not even the company has enough faith to defend it.


Here are the facts: Back in 2002 when the videos first came out, there wasn't any research on whether these videos were any good for a child’s cognitive development. But recently  a survey by researchers at the University of Washington, found that for every hour of baby-video viewing per day, children ages 8 to 16 months knew six to eight fewer words than those who watched no videos. Now think about how many hours parents throw their children in front of the television per day, that is a lot of cognitive development that is not being accessed. 


Studies have shown that the best things that a child could do to have their cognitive abilities advance is to play outside, play with toys, have their parents read out loud to them, for the parents to talk (nicely) around their child. 


Whatever happened to children playing with play doh? or rolling in the grass? how many parents actually read their kids bedtime stories? We put them in front of the TV as soon as they are out of the womb and now we wonder why our kids are so behind in school when they go in 5 years later.


Riah