EARLY INITIATION OF TELEVISION VIEWING: DOES IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN DEVELOPMENTAL FUNCTIONING?

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To examine the impact of television (TV) exposure and the home environment on developmental functioning in young children. METHODOLOGY: A total of 230 school-going children (5-9 yrs) studying in a private school in a north Indian city were recruited. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to assess the number of screens that children had access to, content viewed on TV, daily TV consumption, co-viewing habits, parents' perceptions about the negative and positive effects of TV use. The Mohite home environment inventory assessed the quality of the home environment. The main outcome measure was the child's overall developmental functioning which was measured by the Developmental Prole 3 (DP 3). RESULTS: The majority (77%) of the children watched TV for 1-2 h/day and the prevalence of TV ≥2 h/day was 20%. A little more than one-fth of the parents (21.9%) reported that their child had regularly started to view the TV screen by age 2. Signicant differences were found between the early initiation of TV (24months) group of children and the later initiated group (>24months) on the DP 3 sub-domains and the general developmental quotient (GDQ) (t=2.64, P=.009). Multivariate regression analysis indicated that the number of children in the family, socio-economic status, age at initiation of TV viewing, and home environment explained 14.3% of the variance in the GDQ score (F=10.46, P=.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Early initiation of digital media is associated with poorer developmental outcomes. Pediatricians have a critical role in providing anticipatory guidance to parents regarding inculcating healthy digital screen viewing habits.