Down the Tube: Videos for Tots Don't Aid Learning
Despite the popularity of baby-genius DVDs, there's no evidence they boost intellect
For many parents, TV is the ultimate baby sitter; 68 percent of children under age 2 watch two hours or more of TV each day, a recent survey found. But almost no research has been done on the effect of TV watching on the Pampers set. In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers in Seattle say that tots who watch Baby Einstein- or Brainy Baby-type videos lagged in language acquisition.
The finding highlights the growing disconnect between pediatricians, who say that children younger than age 2 should watch no TV at all, and parents, many of whom embrace baby-genius DVDs and videos in the hope of giving their offspring an early leg up—or giving themselves a few minutes to do the laundry.
Andrew Meltzoff, a psychologist who is codirector of the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, says parents of babies he sees at the center almost always ask about the videos. A parent's typical comment, he says, is" 'Everyone in my child's care group has baby DVDs, and I'm worried that my child will fall behind if I don't have them watch.' " So he looked into it, and he found that for each hour a day that 8-to-16-month-old babies watched baby videos, their language development lagged by 16 percent. The results were published in the August Journal of Pediatrics.
The videos, Meltzoff says, are "really being passed around as if they're brain food for your baby, and it's just not true." Babies are awake and alert only a small fraction of the day, and time in front of the TV, he says, is time not spent listening to stories, playing with siblings, or banging on pots and pans. Babies are intensely interested in people's faces and voices, and parents instinctively exaggerate eye contact, inflection, and gestures when speaking to them. By contrast, the baby videos typically feature short scenes of swirling colors and images, accompanied by the music of Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart. "You're taking time away from social interaction when you put your baby in front of the television," Meltzoff says.
Parents and educators have been debating television's effect on children pretty much since the first broadcast. The notion of educational TV gained traction in 1969 with the launch of Sesame Street, which was aimed at helping preschoolers learn their ABCs. Since then, research has vindicated that premise, showing that programs like Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, and Barney & Friends do have educational value for children ages 2½ to 5.
But in recent years, producers and marketers have turned their efforts from preschoolers to the preverbal. And parents have followed. In 1997, the BBC debuted Teletubbies; the babbling, infantlike characters have TVs in their tummies. That year, Julie Aigner-Clark, a mother and entrepreneur, launched the Baby Einstein Co. Competitors have since jumped in. In 2006, for example, Sesame Workshop introduced Sesame Beginnings, with baby versions of Elmo, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster. Most tout educational benefits in their advertising and labeling.
Parents have embraced baby TV; sales of Baby Einstein products alone hit $200 million in 2005. But despite the products' commercial success, scientists are just starting to examine whether television time with these shows helps or hurts the very young. The evidence so far:
• There is no research that supports the video companies' claims that programs aimed at children under age 2 are educational or help babies learn.
• A 2003 study by Patricia Kuhl, a researcher at the University of Washington (and Meltzoff's wife), found that 9-month-old American babies who were repeatedly exposed to Mandarin Chinese speakers were able to recognize the language's phonetic nuances later. But babies who watched videos of the same people speaking Chinese were not.
• A 2004 study by Dmitri Christakis, a researcher at Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, found that the more toddlers watched TV, the more likely they were to have symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder once they reached elementary school. (Christakis collaborated with Meltzoff on the current research.)
• A 2005 review by Daniel Anderson, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts who is a leading researcher and consultant on educational television, found that children usually learn substantially less from videos than they would from a live presentation.
• Talking and reading to very young children is the most effective way to teach them new words, researchers say.
Susan McLain, general manager of the Baby Einstein Co., disputed the most recent study findings, noting in an E-mail that the researchers didn't directly observe whether viewing baby DVDs or videos had a positive or negative impact on vocabulary acquisition. Indeed, the research found only an association between TV watching and slower language acquisition, not cause and effect. "It might be true that this is terrible for children, but the bottom line is we don't know," says Elizabeth Vandewater, director of the Center for Research on Interactive Technology, Television, and Children at the University of Texas. "We know nothing about the neurological and developmental implications of screen time for very young children."
"Baby Einstein tools are designed as...a catalyst to promote interaction between parents and their young children," McLain wrote. But for many if not most parents, tiny-kid vid is prized as an opportunity to grab a few precious moments of grown-up time.
Since 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged parents to shun TV and computers altogether for kids before age 2. "Yes, I know you need to take a shower, and yes, I know you need to make dinner," says Ali Brown, a pediatrician in Austin who represents the doctors' group on issues concerning children and mass media. "But there's a value to independent play. Your 4-month-old can take a rattle and learn how to shake it. Real-world experiences are much more valuable than watching something."
Or, as Meltzoff says: "Einstein never had a Baby Einstein tape, and he seems to have done just fine, thank you."