What is the TV doing to your infant?

I talked with my sister for a bit this week about how much media she allows her two-year-old to view. Some of the things that she said impacted me. When an infant watches television, they are frozen while watching it. Their brain does not need to work very much because the television is doing the work for it. Therefore, they do not learn and develop as much as they would if they interacted with the world. Even if they are just laying on their backs looking at the ceiling their brain is still more engaged than when they are watching television.

The other thing that stuck out to me is the principle she uses on when to allow her son to watch media. If her purpose is to use the media as a babysitter, then she will not do it. She thinks that it is her duty as a mother to find things to entertain her children. If they are watching something for family time then it is okay to watch, but she will not use media as a babysitter.

That was important to me because I recently spoke with my BYU professor who studies media a lot. The hypothesis behind her study is that if parents use media to regulate their children's emotions (such as giving it to them whenever they get upset) then the children will not learn those important emotional regulation skills. This could correlate with media addiction because that is where they have learned to turn to to regulate their emotions. I think that my sister might be onto something with her idea of not babysitting her children with media because she is preventing them from using it as an emotional regulation tool. She says that none of her children have ever told her that they are bored although they do not get as much media exposure as other children. I find that very fascinating.