Is TV good for toddlers?

• May 1, 2008
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Too much TV?

Letting your youngsters watch the box might improve their communication and social skills.

Preschoolers watch television. No matter how the issue is handled in a household, it is inevitable that at some point in the day they will be watching the screen. In some households children's television is banned, so kids are catching glimpses of the news or other adult content. In others, kids are plonked in front of cable children's channels for the greater part of the day. In most cases it is somewhere in between.

But according to some academics, if children watch the right programs, television can be good for them. Professor Catharine Lumby, director of the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW, says "judiciously used" good children's television can promote literacy and familiarity with audio-visual communication.

"It's not just traditional forms of education such as numeracy and the capacity to read but also narrative literacy - it helps children's understanding of narrative or stories," she says.

Her book Why TV Is Good For Kids, co-written with her partner Duncan Fine, a children's television writer, provoked criticism when it was released in 2006 but Lumby says many critics are missing the point.

"What is poorly understood is that watching TV or any audio-visual material is not something we are born to do, we have to learn how to do it and it is an important skill which is a large part of the way [we communicate]," she says. "Children learn to [notice] new things and get their meaning, they start to recognise characters and plot and humour - they get pleasure but they also have a learning experience from that."

The stress then, is on what constitutes good children's television.

Dr Susan Roberts, senior lecturer at the Institute of Early Childhood at Macquarie University, says key features that parents can use to judge the suitability of a program include whether it is made for the preschool age group. Continued...

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