Thursday 22 September 2022 01:38 AM Watching TV with your child can boost their cognitive development, study finds trends now
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Spending time watching T.V. with parents can actually boost a young child's brain development, a new study finds.
A British research team from the University of Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, performed a meta-analysis of previous studies, finding that while a young child could be harmed by too much screen time alone, having a parent watch with them is beneficial.
This is because the close-by parent can answer questions that may arise, and also converse with them. This turns the usually passive and thoughtless process of watching television into an experience that engages their thinking skills and boosts their ability to conversate.
Researchers warn that TV time should not replace other social and learning activities, and that too much screen time still does carry harms, but there are ways to turn it into a more beneficial activity.
Children can benefit from watching TV with their parents if the adults in the room explain things to them and use it as an opportunity to practice conversational skills, a new study finds
'Weak narrative, fast pace editing, and complex stimuli can make it difficult for a child to extract or generalize information,' Dr Eszter Somogyi, from the psychology department at Portsmouth, said in a statement.
'But when screen content is appropriate for a child's age, it's likely to have a positive effect, particularly when it's designed to encourage interaction.'
The research team, which published its findings Wednesday in Frontiers in Psychology, analyzed 478 studies from over the past 20 years for their paper.
Each included study examined the impacts that watching TV or regular use of a device like a cellphone had on a child's development.
