Babies Shouldn't Watch TV

Don't let babies watch TV.

That's the conclusion from the American Association of Pediatrics, which issued a report today based on a decade of research examining infants and their exposure to media on passive screens. The report says children under two years of age get no benefit from watching video and it may even have some "negative effects." As such, the AAP recommends keeping the lives of young children as "screen-free" as possible.

In 1999, the AAP made the recommendation that parents limit the TV watching of children under two, though the research up until then was scant. Few studies had closely examined the effect of media consumption by young children, which today is typically between one and two hours a day, according to the AAP.

Since then, the number of screens kids are exposed to—from TVs to computer monitors to tablets to smartphones—has multiplied, and so has the research. The AAP looked at more than 50 studies to inform its conclusions. And those conclusions reinforce the conventional wisdom that TV for young children can be a bad thing.

Toddlers, it turns out, don't really understand what's happening on a video screen. While a lot of children's programming is marketed as educational, the benefits appear to be lost on young children. Results from three separate studies linked extra TV time with delays in development. And while watching TV could help some kids fall asleep, that can lead to irregular sleep later on.

TV watching can have indirect ill effects on infants, too. If a child is watching TV, that means he or she isn't playing or interacting with others—two essential activities for development. Children learn language skills mainly from talking and listening to adults, AAP says, and TV characters are no substitute. Children also learn simply by playing on their own.

The AAP does stress, however, that children over two do understand the context and content of programming, and that some video material could be educational for them.

The studies that AAP looked at involved mainly at the effect of passive screens on children, but what about interactive ones, like the touch screens on tablets? The research on those has barely begun, so it's unclear how the ability to interact with apps changes the dynamic. But for any parents unsure, the message is clear: Your child should barely know what a TV is, let alone any characters.