Are Television and Video Games Really Harmful for Kids?

Abstract

Are watching television (TV) and playing video games really harmful for children's development? By using a unique longitudinal dataset with detailed information on children's development and health, we examined the causal effect of hours of TV watched or of video games played on school‐aged children's problem behavior, orientation to school, and obesity. The results suggested that the answer to the question is yes, but the magnitude of the effect is sufficiently small to be considered as negligible. The results were robust to within‐twin‐fixed effects. (JEL I10, I20)

Television, Children's Obesity Risk and Mental Well-being: Lessons from the UK Digital Switchover

“…Similar results were found for the US by Boone et al (2007), using nationally representative data from a prospective cohort study of adolescents followed from 1995 to 2001, and more recently by Tahir et al (2019) who established a dose-response relationship between hours of TV viewing in childhood/adolescence and BMI at age 18 and in adulthood, among females in the US. Other studies contradicted or at least attenuated the Hancox et al (2004) results, finding a weaker and sometimes insignificant association between TV viewing and BMI (Hammer et al, 1993;Du-Rant et al, 1994;Katzmarzyk et al, 1998;Nakamuro et al, 2015).…”

“…Regarding mental well-being, TV viewing has been commonly associated with aggressive behaviour (Johnson et al, 2002;Huesmann et al, 2003;Nakamuro et al, 2015), irregular sleeping time (Johnson et al, 2004;Thompson and Christakis, 2005), anxiety (Bryant et al, 1981), depression (de Wit et al, 2011) and attentional problems (Christakis et al, 2004). The suggested mechanisms behind the potential adverse mental health outcomes comprise: TV watching increasing physical inactivity and/or sedentary time, which in turn harms mental well-being (Lechner, 2009;Harvey et al, 2010;Lubans et al, 2016); TV viewing contributing to weight gain and unfavourable body composition, provoking weight-based bullying, teasing, stigmatization, and ultimately poor mental health (Russell-Mayhew et al, 2012;Nikolaou, 2017); and the sedentary behaviour associated with TV viewing increasing the intake of unhealthy food and beverages (Chou et al, 2008;Hobbs et al, 2015), which harms children's and adolescents' psychological mood (Jacka and Berk, 2007;van Strien et al, 2013).…”

“…First, the (widely) observed correlation between TV viewing and overweight and mental (ill-)health could also be the result of reverse causality: children who are overweightor that feel mentally low -may be less motivated or able to be physically active and, hence, turn to TV viewing more often. Second, there could be third factors -either unobservable or not accounted for in the empirical work (e.g parental preferences and education styles, socioeconomic background) -that simultaneously affect both sides of the observed relationship (Nakamuro et al, 2015).…”

Effects of Gaming on Children’s Brains: Depression and Social Isolation

“…The realization that they are victims of anti-social behaviors creates a sort of depression. This could create further withdrawal and isolation, thus creating tendencies of suicidal thoughts or other self-harming behaviors (Nakamuro, Inui, Senoh, and Hiromatsu, 2015). Some researchers have linked social isolation to possible changes in mental attitude of a child.…”

14. Serious games in medicine

“…Nakamuro et al report on a longitudinal experiment [138] that has checked the causal effect of hours of TV watched or of video games played on school-aged children's problem behavior, orientation to school, and obesity. The results suggest that the magnitude of the effect is sufficiently small to be considered negligible.…”