It occurs to me that “couch-potato-ness” has to be an acquired habit as well. How many times does a kid have to be instructed to sit down, shut up, and stop fidgeting — and punished for getting up, making noise, wandering away, getting into things, making a mess — before they are content to sit and watch TV for hours a day?
Not all people are automatically and naturally active. I certainly am not, and my parents in fact did the opposite of what you are saying. That said, “couch-potato-ness” can certainly be habitualized even in “natural” couch potatoes, making it even harder for them to do other things.
There’s a simpler explanation then either this, or seatbelts, that I’ve discovered in my field research as a parent ;). Television, for young kids, is a super-stimulus that completely captures their attention. For parents, this means you don’t have to attend to your kid—you can do other things without being interrupted with questions or requests, and because their attention is fully occupied, you don’t have to monitor that closely. It’s easy to imagine that using TV in this way is a great temptation for some types of parents (or, arguably, most types) - there’s always chores around the house to do, and you need a break every so often, etc. After a while, I’m sure both parents and kids forget there’s other fun stuff do to, and you now have a TV habit. It’s hard to break, too—kids tend to flip out when you turn it off on them.
Another reason that I’m so glad my parents didn’t have a TV when I was growing up, although sci-fi books provided an adequate superstimulus. I’m pretty sure my parents figured out by the time I was 8 that giving me tons of books for Christmas and birthdays was the best way to keep me out of trouble.
My kids are still very young, so they’re not self-sufficient readers yet, but they really like story-time, so it’s looking good that they’ll grow up into book lovers (and I’m sure they got book-lover genes from my wife and I ;).
I don’t see TV as inherently bad—in fact, some of the kids programming on Treehouse in Canada is quite good! It’s just a tool that is particularly prone to misuse.
As an aside—one of the shows “Guess with Jess” teaches a kid-version of hypothesis formation and testing and inferential reasoning.
I don’t see TV as inherently bad—in fact, some of the kids programming on Treehouse in Canada is quite good!
I’ve sometimes regretted not watching TV for this reason. When I was in seventh grade, my friend called me ‘culturally deprived’. A lot of kids watched the same TV shows and talked about them, and I didn’t get the references. Whereas up until high school, hardly anyone had read the same books that I had. In a way, I was excluded from pop culture. And my general knowledge in areas that don’t specifically interest me, like politics, is probably much lower as a result of not having been plunked in front of educational shows.
Still, I think that not having the habit of watching TV to relax outweighs those downsides. I’m able to get a lot more done in the time I don’t spend watching TV.
I feel TV is inherently bad in some ways; one of my biggest concerns is that the way things are presented is artificial, designed to manipulate the viewer into thinking the way the creators of the show or commercial want him or her to think. Commercials are particularly bad.
Studies show (I don’t have the links, but I bet Google will find them) that there’s correlation between TV-watching time and propensity for violence and other bad behavior in children. I want to say it’s correlated with poorer academic performance as well, but I’m not sure if this was included or not.
That’s not causation, though. Parents who let their kids watch a lot of TV may also be less likely to act against bad behavior (by disciplining them, providing better models for behavior, and so forth). A large amount of TV-watching time could simply be an indicator of poor parenting, rather than the actual cause of bad behavior. I don’t know whether or not this is the case, but I’m wary of studies that only look at surface-level correlations.
Edit: However, after a bit of searching I found this page which summarizes several results that go beyond basic correlation.
one of my biggest concerns is that the way things are presented is artificial, designed to manipulate the viewer into thinking the way the creators of the show or commercial want him or her to think
This is true, but I’m pretty sanguine about it. The reality is, my kids are going to live in a world where they are exposed to media manipulation—protecting them from it at a young age isn’t going to encourage the kind of skepticism required to combat it later. Already, my almost-4-year-old seems to discount how awesome things look in a commercial due to past disappointments.
You’d have to do a study of whether children were more active before seatbelts became common. Which may be impossible. I would expect that children who spend less time in cars (i.e. who live close enough to school that they can walk) would be less likely to develop couch-potato habits.
You could study children living in places with very good mass transit compared to those living in places with little or no mass transit—the latter would be generally spending more time belted in.
You might even be able to find enough children who’d moved from one environment to the other so that if there’s a seatbelt effect, what the critical ages might be.
But mass transit has many other effects besides the seatbelts. For example, cars leave whenever you want them to, while public transport leaves at fixed times. In a bus or train there will often be many strangers, while there will usually be none in a car. Places with good mass transit might be that way for other reasons, like population density, terrain, wealth, political climate, etc.
I doubt you will be able to get a meaningful result about the activity of children in relation to seatbeltiness while controlling for all of these factors.
Side issue: cars leave when the person driving is willing to leave, which isn’t the same thing as being the driver yourself or dealing with mass transit schedules.
I’ve heard for New York and would find it plausible for other places with good mass transit, that New Yorkers do more walking than people in places with little mass transit.
It might be possible to sort out at least some of the confounding factors—not every city has good mass transit, for example.
That data should be possible to obtain, but there are some confounding factors—I can definitely imagine a family more inclined to drive than walk passing the factors that led to those preferences on to their children, for example. And I’m not sure how you’d control for that.
Most studies that try to separate genetic factors from “nurture” factors provided by the parents will twins that were adopted separately. It’s a small-ish subject pool though, and probably not recent since I don’t think they encourage separating siblings for adoption now.
It occurs to me that “couch-potato-ness” has to be an acquired habit as well. How many times does a kid have to be instructed to sit down, shut up, and stop fidgeting — and punished for getting up, making noise, wandering away, getting into things, making a mess — before they are content to sit and watch TV for hours a day?
Not all people are automatically and naturally active. I certainly am not, and my parents in fact did the opposite of what you are saying. That said, “couch-potato-ness” can certainly be habitualized even in “natural” couch potatoes, making it even harder for them to do other things.
There’s a simpler explanation then either this, or seatbelts, that I’ve discovered in my field research as a parent ;). Television, for young kids, is a super-stimulus that completely captures their attention. For parents, this means you don’t have to attend to your kid—you can do other things without being interrupted with questions or requests, and because their attention is fully occupied, you don’t have to monitor that closely. It’s easy to imagine that using TV in this way is a great temptation for some types of parents (or, arguably, most types) - there’s always chores around the house to do, and you need a break every so often, etc. After a while, I’m sure both parents and kids forget there’s other fun stuff do to, and you now have a TV habit. It’s hard to break, too—kids tend to flip out when you turn it off on them.
Another reason that I’m so glad my parents didn’t have a TV when I was growing up, although sci-fi books provided an adequate superstimulus. I’m pretty sure my parents figured out by the time I was 8 that giving me tons of books for Christmas and birthdays was the best way to keep me out of trouble.
My kids are still very young, so they’re not self-sufficient readers yet, but they really like story-time, so it’s looking good that they’ll grow up into book lovers (and I’m sure they got book-lover genes from my wife and I ;).
I don’t see TV as inherently bad—in fact, some of the kids programming on Treehouse in Canada is quite good! It’s just a tool that is particularly prone to misuse.
As an aside—one of the shows “Guess with Jess” teaches a kid-version of hypothesis formation and testing and inferential reasoning.
I’ve sometimes regretted not watching TV for this reason. When I was in seventh grade, my friend called me ‘culturally deprived’. A lot of kids watched the same TV shows and talked about them, and I didn’t get the references. Whereas up until high school, hardly anyone had read the same books that I had. In a way, I was excluded from pop culture. And my general knowledge in areas that don’t specifically interest me, like politics, is probably much lower as a result of not having been plunked in front of educational shows.
Still, I think that not having the habit of watching TV to relax outweighs those downsides. I’m able to get a lot more done in the time I don’t spend watching TV.
I have trouble watching TV by myself without getting bored. It’s not interactive enough, or something. I need a book or a video game instead.
I feel TV is inherently bad in some ways; one of my biggest concerns is that the way things are presented is artificial, designed to manipulate the viewer into thinking the way the creators of the show or commercial want him or her to think. Commercials are particularly bad.
Studies show (I don’t have the links, but I bet Google will find them) that there’s correlation between TV-watching time and propensity for violence and other bad behavior in children. I want to say it’s correlated with poorer academic performance as well, but I’m not sure if this was included or not.
That’s not causation, though. Parents who let their kids watch a lot of TV may also be less likely to act against bad behavior (by disciplining them, providing better models for behavior, and so forth). A large amount of TV-watching time could simply be an indicator of poor parenting, rather than the actual cause of bad behavior. I don’t know whether or not this is the case, but I’m wary of studies that only look at surface-level correlations.
Edit: However, after a bit of searching I found this page which summarizes several results that go beyond basic correlation.
This is true, but I’m pretty sanguine about it. The reality is, my kids are going to live in a world where they are exposed to media manipulation—protecting them from it at a young age isn’t going to encourage the kind of skepticism required to combat it later. Already, my almost-4-year-old seems to discount how awesome things look in a commercial due to past disappointments.
I’ve wondered whether carseats and seatbelts end up training some children to accept not moving much.
You’d have to do a study of whether children were more active before seatbelts became common. Which may be impossible. I would expect that children who spend less time in cars (i.e. who live close enough to school that they can walk) would be less likely to develop couch-potato habits.
You could study children living in places with very good mass transit compared to those living in places with little or no mass transit—the latter would be generally spending more time belted in.
You might even be able to find enough children who’d moved from one environment to the other so that if there’s a seatbelt effect, what the critical ages might be.
But mass transit has many other effects besides the seatbelts. For example, cars leave whenever you want them to, while public transport leaves at fixed times. In a bus or train there will often be many strangers, while there will usually be none in a car. Places with good mass transit might be that way for other reasons, like population density, terrain, wealth, political climate, etc.
I doubt you will be able to get a meaningful result about the activity of children in relation to seatbeltiness while controlling for all of these factors.
It would be complicated, and you might be right.
Side issue: cars leave when the person driving is willing to leave, which isn’t the same thing as being the driver yourself or dealing with mass transit schedules.
I’ve heard for New York and would find it plausible for other places with good mass transit, that New Yorkers do more walking than people in places with little mass transit.
It might be possible to sort out at least some of the confounding factors—not every city has good mass transit, for example.
That data should be possible to obtain, but there are some confounding factors—I can definitely imagine a family more inclined to drive than walk passing the factors that led to those preferences on to their children, for example. And I’m not sure how you’d control for that.
Most studies that try to separate genetic factors from “nurture” factors provided by the parents will twins that were adopted separately. It’s a small-ish subject pool though, and probably not recent since I don’t think they encourage separating siblings for adoption now.
Did they ever encourage it?
It definitely used to happen a lot, judging by the sample size in twin adoption studies (usually 200-something pairs of separated twins).
Seems doubtful to me. It isn’t like you’d be walking around if you didn’t have a seatbelt on.
A seat belt considerably limits one’s ability to shift and turn, and a car seat is even more limiting than a seat belt.