Television's Impact on Child Literacy and Reading Habits

Introduction: Television as a Household Fixture

Ever since it became a household fixture more than fifty years ago, parents and educators have asked the same question: is there such a thing as too much television? Can television interfere with a child's desire to learn to read? When television first debuted, it was touted as the wonder of the age — a miracle of technology that would bring the world into everyone's living room. Television would be an invaluable educational tool, opening up vast new horizons of knowledge. This was the dream. The reality was quite different.

While television's "Golden Years" — the 1950s and early 1960s — did feature some wonderful documentaries together with a number of outstanding theatrical productions, on the whole TV quickly became, as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow put it in 1961, "a vast wasteland" (Mander). Yet it is not only what television does or does not offer that presents a problem. The average American spends an enormous amount of time in front of the television. According to Nielsen Ratings, Americans watch an average of 26.3 hours of television per week (Wilkins), with children and adolescents spending anywhere from 22 to 28 hours a week in front of the TV (American Association of Pediatrics). The time children and adults give over to watching television is time lost to other activities. Regular television viewers exercise less, often snack more, and so forth — but what is particularly disturbing is the effect such chronic television watching is having on the reading habits of the nation's children.

According to the Center for Research on the Effects of Television, television viewing produces one of two types of effects:

Direct and Indirect Effects of TV on Children

Direct effects arise from the content of what is seen — in programs or commercials. Indirect effects arise from the activity of watching TV itself, regardless of what is being watched. This second type of effect is particularly important because it usually means that the more time children spend watching TV, the less time they spend doing other important activities — such as reading, talking with others, getting exercise, playing games, and being outdoors (Scheibe).

In part, children may read less and watch television more simply because their parents are heavy television watchers. In this case, it is a straightforward matter of behavioral modeling, which all children employ. A child who sees his mother constantly on the phone will no doubt mimic that behavior, if only in play (Bryant, 244, 1990). However, a lack of strong interest in reading is not necessarily a sign of an inability to read, or an outright aversion to it.

How Viewing Habits Relate to Reading Choices

Interestingly, there does not appear to be much of a correlation between the sheer amount of time a child watches TV and his or her school performance. More important is the child's attitude toward television programs in general. The following are the results of a study comparing children's viewing habits to the level of difficulty of the books they chose to read:

"The amount of variance accounted for by amount of televiewing is, however, only 2%, and it disappears when intelligence is partialled out. On the other hand, the orientation toward TV (rather than amount of televiewing) accounts for 13.7% of the variance on the level-of-book measure, after intelligence scores are partialled out. But the beta weights are negative: those who take TV more seriously (amount of televiewing and orientation toward the medium are uncorrelated) choose lighter reading material. Children who claim to expend less effort in televiewing and whose orientation toward it is generally less serious choose somewhat more demanding reading materials." (Manley-Casimir, 24, 1987)

Furthermore, the effects of television on a child's ability to read appear to change with age and to vary across different populations:

"Children who spend a great deal of time watching television do poorly in school, but children who spend a moderate amount of time with TV perform better than non-viewers. The small negative relationship between IQ and television viewing masks some important subgroup differences, such as age (high IQ is positively correlated with viewing until the teens) and gender (with the negative relationship holding stronger for boys than for girls). Reading and television viewing are positively correlated up to a threshold of about ten hours of viewing per week. Only when television viewing rises above a certain level does it seem to be related to less reading." (Alexander)

Conclusion: Balancing Television and Literacy

Excessive television viewing adversely affects children's reading and learning abilities regardless of socio-economic background, or prior study habits and academic achievements. Television acts like a mind-numbing drug, depriving children of their imagination and their ability to engage in complex reasoning. It accustoms them to expect everything to be presented polished and fully formed. Children who watch too much TV neglect many other activities — they read less and interact less with those around them, particularly with parents and other adults.