Association of Television Viewing During Childhood With Poor Educational Achievement

Abstract

Television viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with poor educational achievement by 26 years of age. Excessive television viewing in childhood may have long-lasting adverse consequences for educational achievement and subsequent socioeconomic status and well-being.

The Political Legacy of Entertainment TV

“…Our results are also in line with extensive evidence from medicine, psychology, and education on the impact of TV on children's cognitive and social skills, which emphasizes the difference between exposure to age-appropriate educational content and entertainment programs, particularly fast-paced and violent content(Anderson et al 2001;Christakis et al 2004Christakis et al , 2013Hancox, Milne, and Poulton 2005;Ennemoser and Schneider 2007;Landhuis et al 2007;Zimmerman and Christakis 2007;Kirkorian, Wartella, and Anderson 2008). 5 This ban was motivated by the argument that the state would better protect and guarantee the impartiality, objectivity, and completeness of television service (ruling 59/1960 by the Constitutional Court).…”

Family Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement Among Korean Adolescents

“…Adolescents who scored one standard deviation above the sample average on television viewing and Internet use were categorized as belonging to the “primarily watching television” and “primarily using Internet” after-school activity groups. The sample mean and standard deviation of television viewing ( true X ¯ = 2.09 hours, SD = 1.43 hours) and Internet use ( true X ¯ = 1.62 hours, SD = 1.19 hours) were similar to the results of previous time-use studies on media that were conducted with young adolescents (Hancox, Milne, & Poulton, 2005). Categorizing one standard deviation above the sample average as “primary” media-use behaviors also produced results compatible with the previous literature on excessive media time use (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2001; Gomez et al, 2007).…”

Media use and school achievement – boys at risk?

“…Like Gentile et al (2004), by controlling for vital factors such as family, educational, or immigrant background we could achieve a high resolution, which is invaluable for multivariate analyses. The subsequent longitudinal study could widely replicate our cross‐sectional results and – like Ennemoser and Schneider (2007) or Hancox et al (2005) – allowed us to interpret our findings as causal correlations. Furthermore, we emphasized the importance of considering other influential factors such as parental educational level or students' IQ.…”