How much TV does the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that?
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The American Academy of Pediatrics' new guidelines also advise against TVs or Internet access in children's bedrooms Show Children should be limited to less than two hours of entertainment-based screen time per day, and shouldn't have TVs or Internet access in their bedrooms, according to new guidelines from pediatricians. The new policy statement was released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) today (Oct. 28) in the journal Pediatrics. The average 8-year-old spends eight hours a day using various forms of media, and teenagers often surpass 11 hours of media consumption daily, according to the authors of the AAP statement. More than three quarters of teenagers have cell phones, and teens ages 13 to 17 send an average of 3,364 texts per month. Several studies have linked high media consumption with poor health outcomes. For example, children with TVs in their bedrooms are more likely to be obese. But teasing apart cause and effect in those studies is difficult, said Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation and the author of "Screen Time: How Electronic Media — From Baby Videos to Educational Software — Affects Your Young Child," (Basic Books, 2012), who was not involved establishing the new guidelines. New rules In addition to limiting all entertainment screen time — including TV, the Internet and various smart devices — to less than two hours daily, the guidelines recommend children under age 2 get no screen time. Parents should watch TV shows and movies with children, and monitor their media usage, according to the recommendations. Finally, families should define clear rules, such as curfews for Internet use, or limits on cell phone use during dinner. "I think that many parents are clueless about media and the impact of media on their kids," said Dr. Vic Strasburger, the policy statement's lead author and a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico. Children shouldn't have Internet access or televisions in their rooms, because that makes it too hard for parents to monitor kids' media use, Strasburger said. "If you have a 14-year-old son and he has an Internet connection in his bedroom, I guarantee you, he's looking at pornography," Strasburger told LiveScience. Balanced approach Unlike earlier AAP policy statements, the new recommendations acknowledge the benefits of media, such as shows like "Sesame Street" that teach children letters and numbers. That seems like a more balanced approach, Guernsey said. Families are "trying to understand how to navigate media instead of being told, 'no, no keep it away from their children,'" Guernsey told LiveScience. "Not only is that unrealistic, it may not be the best way to model good media use with children." The new guidelines may still be tough for most families to follow, she said. Still, the recommendations are a good starting point, said Oren Amitay, a psychologist in Toronto. "The part about watching things with kids is important," because otherwise parents have no idea what their kids are seeing, he said. Limiting all entertainment screen time to less than two hours per day may be difficult given modern life, but "these are best practices, and you can be flexible," Amitay told LiveScience. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.Original article on LiveScience. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
A new policy statement says kids as young as 15 months can learn from media when a caregiver is present and involved. TongRo Images Inc./Getty Images hide caption toggle caption TongRo Images Inc./Getty Images
 A new policy statement says kids as young as 15 months can learn from media when a caregiver is present and involved. TongRo Images Inc./Getty Images If there's one rule that most parents cling to in the confusing, fast-changing world of kids and media, it's this one: No screens before age 2. As of today, that rule is out the window. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which first issued that recommendation back in 1999, has extensively updated and revised its guidelines for children and adolescents to reflect new research and new habits. The new guidelines, especially for very young children, shift the focus from WHAT is on the screen to WHO else is in the room. And in doing so, they raise some intriguing points about the future of learning from media. For babies younger than 18 months, AAP still says no screens at all are the best idea — with one notable exception: live video chat. Surveys indicate that families already popularly believe that "Facetime doesn't count," or at least that the benefit of virtual visits with grandparents or other relatives outweighs the potential cost of exposing babies to the laptop or phone. The AAP doesn't cite positive evidence that infants actually get something out of this kind of "conversation" the way that they clearly do from live social interaction. But there is some observational research that infants as young as 6 months old are emotionally engaged by playing live peekaboo with Grandma on Skype. For infants and toddlers, age 15 months to 2 years, there is limited evidence from a couple of very small studies that they can learn new words from educational media, if and only if parents are watching alongside them, repeating what the video says and/or drawing attention to what is on the screen. In other words, treating a video or an app like a picture book is the best bet. The flip side of this is that many studies, including this one, have actually shown poorer language skills correlated with earlier solo viewing of "educational" videos. There is also research that shows language delays in children who watch more TV and start watching earlier. In both cases, the problem seems to be media replacing interaction with people. For this reason, the new AAP guideline has changed from "avoid all screens under age 2" to "avoid solo media use in this age group." For preschoolers age 2 to 5, there is more evidence that they have the ability to transfer knowledge from screens to the real world, including early literacy and math, and positive social and emotional skills and behaviors. But the AAP has a strong brand preference here. It names Sesame Workshop and PBS as two trusted makers of evidence-based children's educational media, whereas of an estimated hundred-thousand "education"-branded apps in the iPad store, very few have been found to satisfy high standards for learning. For this age group, AAP recommends no more than an hour a day of screen use. And, just as with younger children, it wants caregivers to take part in screen time: "Co-view with your children, help children understand what they are seeing, and help them apply what they learn to the world around them." How much TV does the average American child watch?Most American children spend about 3 hours a day watching TV. Added together, all types of screen time can total 5 to 7 hours a day. Too much screen time can: Make it hard for your child to sleep at night.
How much television does the average American school age child watch per week?TELEVISION IS A MAJOR PART OF DAILY LIFE
Adolescents aged 9-14 spend over 20 percent of waking hours watching television, compared to 9 percent on hobbies and 3.5 percent on homework. The average American teen spends about 20 hours a week watching television, with the heaviest viewers coming from low-income households.
How many hours of TV should a child watch?The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages media use by children younger than 2 and recommends limiting older children's screen time to no more than one or two hours a day.
What is the AAP's suggestion on television screen time for children less than two and children two and older?Between 18 and 24 months screen time should be limited to watching educational programming with a caregiver. For children 2-5, limit non-educational screen time to about 1 hour per weekday and 3 hours on the weekend days. For ages 6 and older, encourage healthy habits and limit activities that include screens.
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