A new Cornell University study seems to provide evidence of a link between autism and TV watching in early childhood.
One theory is that autism, which is diagnosed in 1 of every 166 children, has a genetic basis but is triggered by unknown environmental factors. The researchers found that autism rates increased dramatically after 1980, when cable TV and VCRs became common in households. They also found that kids under age 3 who spent more time watching TV were more likely to get autism.
Kids now watch about four hours of television daily. Is passively watching flickering two-dimensional pictures messing with their brain development?
The science isn’t conclusive yet. But this is another good reason to limit how much TV your children watch.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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60 Comments
I love you,You love me,Watching Barney casues autism.
Are you sureThis isn’t JunkScienceism?
I smell a GOP rat,Who can’t controlHuman thought or fat.
The thought police are coming,Don’t stop humming,Don’t stop running,The end is coming…
I smell a PBS GOP rat…
I’ll tell you what Randy. You take of your children, I’ll take care of mine.While we’re at it. It’s time to de-fund PBS and NPR. Their relevance is past and they are already sponsered to a large degree. Between the royalties for just Barney and Sesame Street, the lost money would be recovered and the tax payer would be left alone.
This is my professional opinion, based on years of research. Watching Barney does not cause autism or any other mental disorders, however, autistic children or others with mental deficiancies are strongly attracted to the purple dino with homosexual tendancies. Please visit my web site to view my research concerning this subject. greeneggsandham.net
Forgive my ignorance on the matter, but doesn’t Autism have to have a pre-existing neurological condition in order for it to occur? I do recall that emotional trauma was ruled out years ago as starter of Autism.
For homosexual tendencies, I prefer the Doodle Bops.
I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse Seasame Street or Barney of causing Autism, but Barney is quite possibly one of the sickest and twisted kids shows ever made.
Barney talks down to kids by using a tone of voice I equal to an overprotective substitute teacher I had in school.. Kids dont always need overprotection..
Seasame Street talks up to kids and is upbeat, and doesn’t use tones of voice that make them appear fake.
Do the world a favor PBS, cancel Barney and enhance Seasame Street even more.
It is watching Nascar that screws kids up. It turns them into white trash redneck hillbilly republicans.
I considered buying each of my grandsons a singing Barney dinosaur - and sending them home with them … my son threatened to kill me!
Actually, I agree with Erik. Sesame Street does tend to encourage growth; I don’t know that Barney does. I would add that perhaps the problem is the use of the one-eyed babysitter reducing human interaction.
>It is watching Nascar that screws kids up. It turns them into white trash redneck hillbilly republicans.<
This is untested, however if we had a Barney episode where he road along with a NASCAR driver, maybe it would result in children growing up to be healthy well adjusted libertarians.
this study is from the same guy who discovered that reading in braille may cause blindness (due to the high correlatiion of braille-readers & blindness)…keep up the good work!
I am concerned about the alarmist nature of your title. More than a few parents of autistic children have raised their eyebrows about this research, as I have written at my blog Autism Vox:
–First it was iPods, now it’s TV: Blaming autism on electronic appliances–http://www.autismvox.com/first-it-was-ipods-now-its-tv-blaming-autism-on-electronic-appliances/
–Dear Professor Waldman, re: TV and autism—http://www.autismvox.com/dear-professor-waldman-re-tv-and-autism/
“The science isn’t conclusiveyet(?)” How about ever? Typical of shabby reporting. If it isn’t conclusive, why even talk about it? It’s just more Nanny state thinking.
Now we know what causes autism, great. Could someone please do a study to find out why all liberals and most democrats are brain dead.
Nice to know Cornell has funding for such important studies.
My daughter was diagnosed with broad spectrum autism at age 3. She doesn’t even know who Barney is, however, she did watch the Baby Einstein videos from the time she was just a baby. I’ve often wondered if that wasn’t a factor. It’s worth noting that autism spectrum disorders run in her fathers side of the family. I think autism is part genetics and part environmental.
Barney causes autism? Makes for a great headline but where’s the journalistic accuracy? Oh wait. This is a blog so you can be loose with the facts, right? What I read in the study is that television at an early age may trigger autism. And I’d agree that too much television at an early age isn’t best for a child’s development. But PBS children’s programming is awesome. It’s tested and supported by educators around the world. I’m thankful every day that my kids are blessed with healthy bodies and minds. But to falsely accuse Barney of causing autism. Good Grief, Charlie Brown! What’s next? Blaming Cookie Monster for the rise in childhood obesity?
The Wiggles! Uhhh….I’m 38 and these guys make me want to scream “Madonna, Madonna, Martha Graham, Martha Graham”
I’ve heard that kids who bang their heads against the wall and hit themselves with bowling pins are often diagnosed with autism.
I have friends who are really boring lifeless slugs…I guess they grew up watching Mr. Rogers.
I frighten small children….I grew up watching the Sleestacks.
Danger! Will Robinson! Too much ‘Lost in Space’ will cause you to grow up and be a Scientologist.
I jumped off a talk building and screamed “Shazaamm”, it cost me a leg, my pelvis, and eight teeth. Shazaam is not real.
“Shazaam” did teach me to listen to my Elders.
“Isis” made me feel very seductive.
The Nanny state has already blamed Cookie Monster for fat kids. De-fund PBS and NPR!
Being well out my area of expertise (assuming I have one at all), it makes sense to me that exposure, at a young age, to the flickering images generated by a television screen for too long a period might be an environmental factor which triggers Autism in a child with a genetic predisposition thereto. I would hope additional research will be done. Clearly, the current state of research is inconclusive, but provides a basis for a hypothesis to be rigorously tested in further studies.
If the hypothesis is later found to be true, does anyone but me have a concern about the effects of the necessary studies on the “control group”?
put’em to sleep
Science is a process by which bits of evidence are collected over time from numerous studies. It is much like assembling a jig saw puzzle, trying to find how each piece of information fits in the “big picture” or whether it even belongs. Autism is particularly problematic to research, as autism merely describes a set of symptoms rather than a single, specific physiological disorder. Compare this to something like cystic fibrosis, where the cause (faulty genes for a membrane transport protein) are well known and understood. No one, not even experts in child neurological development, can conclusively say at this point whether this study will provide meaningful insight into autism. Studies such as this can be judged by other scientists and researchers in the field in terms of methodology and analysis, but no one is equipped with sufficient information at this time to judge whether or not the study provides meaningful information, especially untrained lay persons or journalists lacking expertise in the field.
Good post, surrounded; you articulated that which I was unable to do.
Agreed. In a number of cases I suspect that a combination of genetic pre-disposition and environmental factors cause autisma nd other problems. As mentioned above my problem with TV (and not just Barney) is that it is not interactive. Playing with other children and adults is.
In defense of the editors I would note that they posed their headline as a question - and made clear that this is preliminary.
Maybe if we all backed off on the hyperbole and put on our thinking caps we could talk about this issue with a tad more respect and understanding.
Autism has been around for more years than Barney, Sesame Street, the Flintstones, Your Show of Shows, Television, Radio, Gutenburgs printing press and the Rosetta stone.
I dare say that Barney does not cause autism. Adults who don’t like Barney or television for that matter however will jump at this preliminary study as “fact” because it fits their preconceived opinions perfectly.
If you don’t like TV don’t watch it, if you don’t like radio don’t listen to it. If you don’t like what your neighbors are doing (unless it’s illegal) don’t pay attention to it, ignore it, look out the other window, whatever works for you. Stop trying to make yourself feel better by interfering in other peoples lives. Fix yourselves and when you’re “perfect” then you can fix others.
Of the four of my kids, only one (now age 17) watched Barney. No problem with autism. In fact, most of the time we can’t shut her up.
My TV is on all day, tuned to either Noggin or Nick Jr., thanks to my three grandkids, who are here for approximately 9 hours every day except Sunday. They don’t watch it all day. They play with the mound of toys provided, chase each other through the house, eat lunch, take naps, flush cellphones, and get into everything. They have their favorite shows and actually sit down during them to watch. Dora the Explorer has been a fave, SpongeBob is, too, right now, as are several more educational types on Noggin.
The youngest of the gk’s is not quite 2 1/2. He can count to 12, without prompting. The other two are girls, one almost 4, the other almost 5. The 5-year-old knows her alphabet and both girls can count in both English and Spanish. (I’m trying to teach them to count in French, too.) They’re both learning to write their names, and we’re working a little on addition and subtraction. Watching TV has been a part of the education that we (their parents and I) build on.
In spite of all the warnings about the horrors of children watching TV, in our family there’s no indication that it has been harmful. In fact, my kids learned early on to differentiate between reality and fantasy. I credit some of that to my participation in theater when they were young, where they got to see Mom become “someone else.” The other is the many “The Making Of…” shows that abound. TV has also encouraged some of their reading. That’s something I will never knock.
Bring back Fraggle Rock!!
RD - I’m working on teaching my grandkids to count up to my age … the problem there is their attention span!
They love the extreme garage type shows - anything with heavy equipment, tractors, etc.
Your grandkids are boys, right, Ben? If so, I’m not surprised. There’s definitely a difference in tastes between the sexes.
There wouldn’t be a long attention span if counting to my age here, either.
Now that I give it some thought, we all really take our lead from the kids themselves. Right now, the older ones seem to be in letters. The little one will count anything.
We don’t watch Barney. We teach them the same songs heard on that show, though–old songs learned in Brownies and Girl Scouts.
Yep, boys. Little “angels”. (yea, the only question is when did they “fall”)
They are a lot of fun but sure can take it out of you!
Insanity is hereditary; we catch it from our grandkids!
Is passively watching flickering two-dimensional pictures messing with their brain development?The science isn’t conclusive yet. But this is another good reason to limit how much TV your children watch.Posted by Randy Scholfield
October 20, 2006 in Television | Permalink
DON’T LET THEM READ TWO-DIMENSIONAL WICHITA EAGLE THAT HAS ONLY A ONE-DIMENSIONAL VIEW.
Gee, RA, I thought the Eagle itself was three dimensional.
Um, I applaud the Eagle staff for discussing Autism, as the mother of a child with Autism, I think we do need more attention. However Barney? COME ON! Don’t be ridiculous. If you’re going to write about it, at least discuss something pertinent, like immunizations, or chelation, or the GFCF diet, or getting some REAL DAMN HELP for our kids.
Or how about this…how about the fact that our kids watch for hours anything that spins and flicks, therefore our kids are more likely to watch more tv?
My child’s first symptoms began at 10 months of age. It was AFTER that that I couldn’t remove him from the tv set, it was the only thing that kept him from shrieking all day long. And I believe that repetition of watching the same recorded shows over and over that helped him to learn to talk.
Vaughn, I belong to a large US group for parents of auties, and I can tell you we’ve run the gamut on asking what we think may cause autism. We’ve done polls, we’ve done consensus. None of us can conclusively define any one thing that most of us share that causes autism, except other neurological disorders in the family. Many of our kids have dual diagnoses (tourettes and autism, bipolar and autism, ocd and autism, ADHD and autism)…
Even smoking has been ruled out. The majority of moms in our group did not smoke anywhere near the time, were not exposed, or never ever smoked.
Don’t ever judge a parent of an autie for their parenting, trust me on this, the parenting manual gets totally thrown out the window with this disorder. If that means 24 hours of television, that’s what it is. I let go of the guilt long ago. Luckily he moved out of that stage a few years ago.
As I”m typing this, I”m trying to convince my 6 year old son to stop screaming. He has very OCD tendencies, and right now he thinks that he has to speak to everyone on the block everytime he sees them outside. We’ve already been out to say ‘HI’ four times since I got home from work. Luckily I have the most wonderful and understanding neighbors- well except for the evangelical couple- but I’m sure they think it’s my punishment from God for something.
By the way, any other parents of auties are welcome to email me, my email is live.
P-mom, I’m not going to fib and say I understand; I don’t, as our two girls were blessedly free from autism and other neurological disorders. I have a client with an autistic son, and have obsesrved him (the son), in short visits to my office; I can see why the “parenting manual” (gee, my girls didn’t come with one of those) goes out the window.
I have a nephew who was provisionally diagnosed autistic when he was about 2; the eventual diagnosis was something else, the name and acronymn for which I do not recall. He is a Senior in High School this year, doing quite well academically, but still has issues with oral communication.
This is by way of explanation of my intellectual curiosity concerning the condition. I read articles, when I can, to try to get a general understanding of the condition (is this a correct way to refer to it? I don’t perceive it as a “disease”). The root for my comment in the post concerning the hypothesis is the fact that I understand seizures in a person with epilepsy can be triggered from flickering pictures, be they movies or from television. As both epilepsy and autism are neurological, it seemed logical to me that the flickering of the TV screen might be something to consider.
It’s true that studies show kids who are exposed to a lot of TV tend to be more hyperactive. It has to do with the images changing every 3 seconds or less, and the way the brain is being hard wired at the age of 5 and under. My personal opinion is that it makes kids more agressive also. I finally had to ban my boys from watching a show that was a lot like the Power Rangers in the 70’s and early 80’s. It was their favorite show, and they would be absolutely uncontrolable afterward.Now that they’re grown and have their own kids, they don’t even own a TV, I really admire them for that. My grandkids are much better off for it.
Anon, you sound just like that jackass, Ian. Hummmm.. I wonder why?
Well then Anon, I guess I’m in good company with my ‘trailer-trash’ compadres like Doug Flutie, Bob Wright (chairman of NBC), and all those Silicon Valley parents.
Vaughn it was a good thing to think about- at least I can understand why you made that leap there, but flickering lights can cause seizures in people who do not have seizure disorder, nor does it cause seizure disorders. Conversely, a person with a seizure disorder seizes no matter what the stimuli or lack of. And yes, you’re right it’s a condition, not a disease.
Mary the hyperactivity has been linked to the level of violence too. I wouldn’t let my kids watch power rangers either.
Don’t forget Dan Marino Mom.I’m sorry to hear you evangelical Christian neighbors are a-holes.
The wife isn’t so bad, it’s her husband. And they don’t seem to understand that my son doesn’t “get it” that he can only play with their son when the dad isn’t around. So I had to stop letting him play with him at any time.
Thanks for the information, Mom.
No Problem Vaughn. And Kia you’re right, how could I forget Marino! He opened a whole center for Autism in Florida (and God knows they need all the help they can get in Florida).
Yea like their child will “catch it” or something (roll of eyes).
But ignorance isn’t limited to spiritual beliefs or social class standing!
I could tell you some stories Mom about growing up with a cousin who is autistic. He’s 46, almost 47 now. I am 39.
I can’t imagine doing this even in the 80’s much less the 50’s.The information and therapies and help was just not even available hardly. At least I can network with other parents online…how alone and desperate they must have felt back then.
What do you think about the theory that immunizations can cause autism?
I believe that there is merit to the argument. The CDC has been caught skewing their own results. I don’t think it’s ALL immunizations, I think that it’s a combination of having a genetic link as well. There are good studies that show how the increase in autism correlates to the increase in immunizations that kids get. That it’s a cumulative effect, that autistic kids can’t excrete it like non autistic kids. But it’s not just autism, but the other disorders too.
There are kids who have done remarkably well after Chelation therapy, some parents even call it a cure. And there are kids who are autistic and never had an immunization either- so I would never say that’s ALL there is to it.
I will not immunize for the time being until I believe there is no link. We’ve just come so far, I couldn’t bear it to go backwards now. And for those docs and nurses out there who don’t understand, well, I understand their position, but they don’t have to live with him if he does regress.
for good articles on the immunization debate, see http://www.safeminds.org and http://www.thimerosal-news.com/
Why would anyone want to troll poitical mom? I consider her a fine human being and a very good addition to this forum.
“Anon”? There is only one other poster on this forum who uses the word “kinder”. That would be Ian Santiago. Ian if you are playing at “anon” I will withdraw any and all defense of you and advise others to do the same.
PMom, Thanks for the link, I sent it to my son and his wife. They have a 3 mo old and are trying to decide if they should immunize her or not. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the info.It’s hard for me, I understand the concern about immunizations, but as a nurse, I also have seen the effects of not immunizing. It’s such a difficult choice.
The thing that bugs me about mercury is that it shouldn’t be needed. It is being used as a preservative - we have better mathods for that including refrigeration and “just in time” manufacture.
My mother was a nurse Mary - having seen polio she was a real hawk on immunizations. She was also a hawk on safety - gave me a child seat as my son’s birth present.
It’s hard when something that is so ingrained in health care, like immunizations, is being questioned with valid data. If my son and his wife choose not to immunize, will my grandchild be at serious risk for disease that could disable or even kill her? If they do immunize her and she is damaged as a result, how do they live with that? Either way, the choice is gambling with a child’s life.
Classic risk-benefit analysis. Add to that the facts that (a) treatments have improved and (b) in many cases likelihood of exposure decreased. Makes it difficult.
Well I would definately do polio and pertussis and tetanus. However finding them as individual is very hard to do, and I’ve found that even finding the right BRAND is hard to do as well.
It’s a hard decision, one I wouldn’t have even thought twice about before.