If you are looking after a toddler but also have a lot of work on your hands, television may be a temptation to keep the kiddo busy. But a new study shows that exposing little kids to screen time could adversely impact their ability to process the world around them. Researchers from Drexel University in Philadelphia, USA, have found that kids, as young as just two years old, exposed to TV viewing were more likely to develop atypical sensory processing behaviours.
They could be less sensitive and slower to respond to stimuli from their immediate surroundings by the time they were close to completing three years of age. The kids so exposed to TV, the researchers found, tended to be disinterested and disengaged from activities and needed higher stimulation, besides being overwhelmed by loud sounds and bright lights, their study in Drexel’s College of Medicine published in the journal JAMA Paediatrics said.
To reach their conclusions, the research team used a tool called Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile (ITSP), which examines kids’ patterns of sensation seeking, low registration, sensory sensitivity and sensation avoidance. For this, the team obtained data from between 2011 and 2014 on TV- or DVD-watching children in the age ranges of 12, 18 and 24 months from the National Children’s Study on 1,471 children across the USA.
The findings indicated 105% more likelihood of the adverse impacts on one-year-olds for any screen exposure, 23% more among 18-month-olds for each additional hour of daily screen time, and 20% increased odds of high sensation seeking, sensory sensitivity, and sensation-avoiding for each additional daily screen time for two-year-olds. The team’s finding adds to the concerns involving screen time and kids’ well-being.