Parents worry about drugs and resolve to keep their kids clean. Parents worry about violence and resolve to keep their kids safe. But when parents worry about television . . . they just keep worrying.
The problem with television is that there are at least two sides to every argument about it. It has been linked to educational and social development in young children -- as well as obesity and aggression in adolescents. Television teaches kids important educational lessons -- and to use profanity. There is at least one television in almost every American home, and no other piece of furniture causes as much parental anxiety. Unfortunately, parents may have more cause to worry than they think.
Gallup Youth Survey (GYS) data* indicate that a majority of teens watch as much television as they want. Sixty-seven percent say their parents put no restrictions on the number of hours they may watch. That may be in part because, as a 2002 Public Agenda survey reports, almost half (48%) of all parents say the amount of television their children watch is "not an issue" in their households. On the other hand, Nielsen Media Research reports that American kids age 2 through 11 watch an average of 3 hours and 16 minutes per day, significantly more than the 2-hour maximum recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
What Are Kids Watching?
Every generation, whether it knows it or not, harbors a common image it saw on television -- the moon landing, Nixon's post-resignation V-signs, hijacked planes plunging into the World Trade Center. The presumptive value of television is that it brings us together. In the Public Agenda study, 93% of parents said, "TV is fine for kids as long as [they are] watching the right shows in moderation." But do parents know what kids are watching, or do they just think they do?
The GYS study asked 13- to 17-year-olds if their parents or guardians "put any restrictions on the type of programs you can watch." Fifty-three percent said yes. But enforcing those restrictions may be a challenge for many. When Public Agenda asked parents of 13- to 17-year-olds about an adult presence, 47% said they supervise what their kids watch on television, but only 30% say they are always around when their kids watch. And of the parents who do supervise their teens' television watching, 71% say they have been "shocked and offended" by something they saw. Perhaps it's no wonder. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, 90% of what children watch is designed for adults.
Very Remote Control
The disparity between kids' relationships to television and their parents' perceptions of those relationships is troubling. There is a great deal of programming available for younger viewers, especially small children (although the AAP recommends that children under age 2 should not watch TV at all). On the other hand, there is a great deal of programming that would seem to be inappropriate for children. And kids seem to be absorbing more of it than their parents think. According to the American Psychological Association, by the time children graduate from high school, they have watched 22,000 hours of television, and spent about half as much time in a classroom.
*Findings are based on telephone interviews with a representative national crosssection of 501 American teen-agers, aged 13 to 17. Interviews were conducted January through April 2000. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±5%.