A children’s medical watchdog in Australia says that the proper amount of time watching television for children aged two and younger is flat-out zero. And they shouldn’t be watching very much more after that age, either. According to The Australian, the researchers included computer time, plugging in DVDs and using electronic games among the items to be avoided.
The Australian Communication and Media Authority has data stating that four-month-old babies are already watching 44 minutes of television per day on average.
The researchers say it is important for children in this group and the next one up – age 2-5, to be active in general and interactive with other humans to develop properly. They add that the 2-5 group should see no more than one hour of television programming a day.
The recommendations were published as new federal guidelines for Australian parents.
It is believed that the greatest fault of parents is the use of the television as a temporary babysitter when the adult feels the need to get some work done or take a break.
RBR-TVBR observation: Anybody out there programming for the 1-24 month demo? We didn’t think so. There just isn’t that much on TV that should be of much interest to a one-year-old, other than a general fascination with the noise and swirling color patterns. In short, this is a parenting problem, not a programming problem.
