More studies say TV bad for kids

Too much TV watching can harm children’s ability to learn and even reduce their chances of getting a college degree, three new studies suggest in the latest effort to examine the effects of television on kids.

The separate findings are published in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

One of the studies involved nearly 400 Northern California third-graders.

It found that children with TVs in their rooms but no computer at home scored the lowest on math and language arts tests, while those with no bedroom TV but who had home computers scored the highest, according to researchers Dina Borzekowski of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Dr. Thomas Robinson of Stanford University.

“While this study does not prove that bedroom TV sets caused the lower scores, it adds to accumulating data that kids shouldn’t have TVs in their bedrooms,” Robinson said.