Decrease influence of television now

Parenting Today

By Mat Anderson

Two new studies have found that there may be a link between how much TV teens watch and poor diet and depression later on in life.

The first study, conducted by the University of Minnesota, surveyed nearly 2,000 students ages 13 and 16 regarding diet and TV viewing habits. When surveyed again, five years later, students who reported habitually watching more TV had significantly less healthy diets. These young adults were more likely to consume more calories and have diets high in fast food, junk food and sugar-sweetened beverages.

Some causes of this may be that TV programs feature more commercials for fast food, soft drinks and junk food than healthy foods, and as a result, teens consume more of these types of foods during adolescence and into adulthood.

In another study, this one conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, more than 4,000 middle- and high-school students were interviewed regarding their TV viewing habits. When the students were interviewed again seven years later, researchers found that with each additional hour of TV viewing per day as a teen, the subjects were more likely to show signs of depression as young adults. While no causal link has been made between TV and depression, it’s likely that TV viewing contributes to depression through a combination of the content teens see on TV.

Anyone who has seen prime-time teen programming lately can attest to the unhealthy and unrealistic depiction of the world found in these shows. It is a world where all teens are attractive and skinny with no need for education or parental involvement.

Additionally, it is a world that exposes teens to more than 1,000 murders, rapes, assaults and armed robberies each year. Teens are also exposed to 20,000 commercials per year that project an imperfect world that can be made better by purchasing certain products. This combination of unrealistic expectations, violence and materialism can be very depressing.

While these studies are troubling and it can be tempting to blame the problems of childhood obesity and teen depression on TV and advertisers, the real problem to be solved probably isn’t how much TV teens watch but instead how much time they spend with parents.

The truth is that the average parent spends less than 20 minutes a day in meaningful interaction with their teen, while teens spend more than three hours a day watching TV.

In fact, research has found that next to family, television has the greatest social impact on the lives of teens, and in an average year, a teen will spend more time watching TV than in a classroom.

What this means is that while most teens could stand to watch less TV (the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours of quality programming each day), what they need most is greater parental involvement in their lives.

When parents treat the TV like a baby-sitter and the source of education for kids is commercials (that tell them they can eat Big Macs all day long and stay skinny) and TV programming (that often revolves around plots of murder, sex and dishonesty) it’s believable that as young adults, they will be at risk for obesity and depression.

However, by spending more time interacting with teens, limiting content and helping them analyze and question what they see on TV, parents can deepen their relationship with their child while decreasing the influence of television in their lives.

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