Letters to the Editor

This letter is associated with the following article:
Most kids under 2 are parked in front of the electronic babysitter every day. Author Lisa Guernsey explains how the tube impacts the smallest couch potatoes.
  • It does seem that TV makes the kids miss out...

    So let's see - very young kids don't learn as well from a video screen as from in-person interactions, can't figure out what sequence a show is supposed to be in (i.e. aren't making much sense of what's happening on the screen), don't get to develop their language skills (and in fact, kids who watch a lot of TV have reduced vocabularies compared to their TV-less peers)... and this is OK for kids - why? Sure, a few minutes every so often probably won't kill the kid, but still - why, when there are so many other distractions available? Wouldn't the kid be better off interacting with, say, a babysitter, a grandparent, a neighbor - any human being - than a television screen? Or why not give the kid some blank paper and some crayons?