Watching TV Can Improve Academic Success, Says Study

“Researchers at the University of London found that children who watched three or more hours a day were three months ahead of their peers who watched less than an hour a day,” says The Telegraph.

Parents have told children for years that watching too much television will scramble you brains.

Well this new study does suggest that the opposite is true.

The Daily Mail even goes on to say that the study also found that other family rules such as regular bed and meal times only make a relatively small difference in their child’s academic success.

The Telegraph reported that test results comparing kids of the same social class, regular meal times only gave a six-week advantage in terms of reading and writing skills, while set bedtimes gave only a two-month head start.

So while kids my think they are off the hook with their bed time routines, the study still suggests that these set routines do help in performance.

The report’s lead author Dr Alice Sullivan, senior academic at the university’s Institute of Education, admitted the results, particularly those regarding television, were ‘contrary to expectations’ according to the Daily Mail.

According to The Telegraph, Sullivan continued on to say that the educational value of children’s television had been “underestimated”, adding: “It may also help expose some children to a broader vocabulary than they get at home.”

The study’s findings, according to the Daily Mail are as follows:

It used test results for 11,000 British seven-year-olds tracked since birth as part of a long-term project called the Millennium Cohort Study.

The analysis was published in the journal Sociology and came to the conclusion that “social class and in particular parents” education were the dominant factors’ in determining how well children fared.

Some other related news includes recent studies on whether or not reading on electronic devices could hinder reading comprehension for children. One study says it does and one study says it doesn’t. Guess that one is still up in the air then, huh?

According to TVNZ.com and the Daily Mail, the researchers had originally set out to examine claims made by politicians, including David Cameron, that parenting skills were more important than social background in determining how well children performed at school.

So according to this recent study, spending a few ours in front of the TV really won’t fry your child’s brain, but instead suggests that it could really help. What are your opinions?

[Image via The Star]