Babies who watch an hour of baby videos each day learn fewer words than their peers, according to a study that will appear later today in The Journal of Pediatrics. The news has already been reported in a story by HealthDay (on the RevolutionHealth web site) and in a report from The Los Angeles Times, among other places.
The study, based on a telephone survey with about 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota, showed that there was a significant link between scores on language tests and the amount of baby-video viewing by babies 8 to 16 months old. With one hour of viewing videos like Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, children's scores slipped by about 17 percentile points, or the equivalent of 6 to 8 words.
One theory for the slippage, the authors write, is that the DVDs are replacing time in which parents could be talking to their babies, reading to them and telling them stories. In fact, by contrast, scores were significantly higher among parents who read to their babies or told them stories at least once a day.
"What did show up," said Dimitri Christakis, one of the study authors, in a brief telephone interview, "was that reading and telling stories were all positively associated with language development."
The lead author is Frederick Zimmerman and the other name on the report is Andrew Meltzoff. All three authors are oft-cited researchers at the University of Washington.
Three points that intrigued me and call out for more discussion:
- A negative association with baby videos did not show up for an older group of children -- those aged 17 to 24 months. Why not?
- Children's educational shows were seen to have no correlation with language development, either good or bad, in either age group
- It is a small proportion of parents who are putting their children in front of baby DVDs for that long. The study showed that, at the median, babies were watching about 9 minutes of baby videos a day. (Other media -- like children's shows and grownup TV -- took up other small chunks of the babies' video diet.)
In my upcoming book on screen time among kids 0-5, I talk about the lack of research behind marketing claims for these videos. I also point to research that describes how important it is to put video time in the context of healthy daily routine. That means thinking about what screen time is replacing.
5:14:19 PM 
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