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TV Bad, Computers Good

by Hsien-Hsien Lei on August 12th, 2005

My three-year-old doesn’t have his own bedroom yet let alone a TV in the bedroom. We’re good on the computer front too because our laptop with the internet connection is kept in the living room. In a recent study, researchers found that kids who had television sets in their bedrooms scored lower on school achievement tests than kids without TV’s in their bedrooms. In contrast, having a home computer boosted scores.

The researchers took into account parents’ education level, the child’s gender and the amount of media used per week and still the results were:

• Children with bedroom TV sets scored around 8 points lower on math and language arts tests and 7 points lower on reading tests
• Children with access to a home computer had scores that were around 6 points higher on the math and the language arts test and 4 points higher on the reading test, controlling for the same variables.
• Children who had a television set in the bedroom but did not have a computer at home scored the lowest
• Children without TV in the bedroom but with access to a computer at home scored the highest
• Children who gained a television in the bedroom over the course of the school year scored lower in all areas than those who had their TV taken away during the same period.

Thomas N. Robinson, MD, MPH, an associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at Stanford University and director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford said,

While this study does not prove that bedroom TV sets caused the lower test scores, it adds to accumulating data that kids shouldn’t have TVs in their bedrooms. It also suggests that investing in a home computer for a child to use may be an additional strategy to help your child’s test scores. The best combination was having both: no TV in the bedroom and also a home computer to use.

Got it? Basically, TV in the bedroom is bad, computers at home are good. Interestingly, there was no association between test scores and the amount of time spent watching television.

Now I don’t feel so bad that my son spent all morning watching the IMAX Space Station DVD and playing on his own while I tried to design a new blog banner. At least we were both in the living room.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Public Affairs, July 4, 2005

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