För mycket tv-tittande kan leda till akademiskt misslyckande

They don't call it the idiot box for nothing. Three studies suggest that watching too much TV makes you stupid, at least as measured by school grades and test scores.

In the longest-running study, Bob Hancox's team at the University of Otago in New Zealand monitored the television-viewing habits of 1000 children at two-year intervals from the ages of 5 to 15, and compared them with their academic achievements at age 26. Children who watched the least TV between ages 5 and 11 were the most likely to graduate from university, while those who watched the most TV at ages 13 to 15 were most likely to drop out of school (Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, vol 159, p 614). "It is pretty convincing evidence that TV is not educational, at least not in a way that helps children academically," says Hancox. ¹

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Teenagers who watch several hours of television a day do worse at school and are less likely to graduate than their peers, a new study suggests.

The 20-year study involving nearly 700 families in upstate New York, US, found that those watching more than three hours of TV a day were twice as likely not continue their education past high school. The researchers say their study is the first to show that attention problems linked to TV viewing could be the cause of academic failure, since they controlled for learning difficulties and behavioural problems at the start of the study.

But other experts say the link is unclear: teens with learning disorders might simply be more likely to watch many hours of TV because they find activities such as reading textbooks too challenging. ²

Oavsett om tonåringar med inlärningsproblem ser mer tv, är det fortfarande en negativ trend.