TV is even worse for your kids than you think!

A tip of the hat to one of my managers for flagging this story.

It’s always seemed common sense to me that small children shouldn’t watch television. You should be playing with them; letting them marvel at really cool mobiles; talking to them in depth about existentialism, American football, and Thundercats; reading to them, and exposing them to lots of Beethoven, Miles, Stevie Wonder and OutKast. You know — developing their minds so that your friends and frienemies can tell you, “Oh, s/he’s so SMART!” when your kid’s 7 years old and ready to learn algebra.

But you know, common sense ain’t common, and in our hectic, two-income households, it’s easy to let the television baby-sit. What’s worse is that the mass media tells us it’s OK and has created a huge market for kids’ videos that are intended to do precisely that. Sadly, it appears that plopping our babies and toddlers in front of the boob tube may be partly responsible for the MASSIVE increase in autism over the past two decades. From Slate:

Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.

And my statements above shouldn’t be taken as bashing parents dealing with this torturous and tragic issue — not being a parent yet myself, I only have brief peeks into the sheer amount of energy it takes to raise a child — such as the comically horrific story I was told the other day about two flu-crippled parents trying to keep track of a 2-year old.

It’s just a reminder that technology can have serious downsides. And to turn off the tv.