Many people are leaving their children watching television despite warnings from pediatricians that television can have a negative impact on the growth of young children's brains, a study showed.
About $ 40 of children aged three months and $ 90 of two-year-olds watch television regularly, according to the study, published Monday by the Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine Department.
The majority of American children start watching television at the age of nine months, she said.
The study found that at the age of three months, children watch television less than one hour a day, and at two years the rate is two and a half hours.
The study was conducted on a sample of 1009 people aged 2 to 24 months in February 2006.
Most of the people said their children were watching only educational programs, but $ 21 admitted to using television as a distraction. For $ 29, residents say television is beneficial to the brain growth of their children.
But Frederic Zimmerman of Washington State University, the lead author of the study, concluded that watching television two and a half years ago is detrimental to brain growth in children.
Another study, published in the same journal Monday, showed that teenagers who watch television for more than three hours a day face higher school failure than others.
Even teenagers who watch TV only an hour a day face the possibility of falling back in school more than those who do not watch television at all, she said.
She concluded that adolescents who watch television for long hours are more likely than others to have behavioral disorders and difficulties in concentration and boredom in school.
