Disney refunding on bogus baby intelligence DVD's

[dieseltaylor]

Very interesting argument/article beyond simply the DVD refunds. I have thought CBeebies wrong in conception from the start.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6894458.ece

Highlights :

In Britain statistics are not available for babies, but in similar countries such as Australia, the average four-month-old gazes at the box for 44 minutes every day. In the US, under 2s watch 1.2 hours a day on average.

But then the tide began to turn. In the 2004 Journal of Pediatrics, a study from Seattle found that for every hour of television watched between the ages of 1 and 3, the risk of attention problems at age 7 increases nearly 10 per cent.

In August 2007 the same journal published a study showing that for children aged between 8 and 16 months, exposure to baby DVDs delayed their speech (for toddlers older than 17 months it did not have an effect). For each hour a day spent watching baby DVDs, infants understood on average six to eight fewer words than those who did not watch them.

The Swedes and France seem more ahead of the game. Is it something to do with the respective clout of the vested interests in WASP countries.?

[costard]

Nah - the more time the kid spends in front of the box, the less time s/he spends interacting (and learning) with a family member. The TV is being used as a nanny, a job for which it isn't suited. It works for busy or lazy parents, though.