A collection of recently published news
stories
(NOTE: hyperlinks in news stories below have been added by media educator
Frank Baker to assist the reader
who may wish to explore or gain further information); see also recommended
Media Effects Texts
Even Indirect TV Time May Increase Kids' Aggression
The more TV a young child watches -- and the more time mom and
dad spend in front of the tube -- the more aggressive the youngster may be,
researchers say. Among three-year-olds, both direct TV watching and household TV
viewing were significantly associated with childhood aggression. (Source:
MedPageToday)
"Early childhood aggression can be problematic for parents, teachers and
childhood peers and sometimes is predictive of more serious behavior problems to
come, such as juvenile delinquency, adulthood violence and criminal behavior,"
according to background information in the article. (Source:
EurkeAlert)
Texting Affects Quality of Sleep
A recent study revealed that text messages on mobile phones are making an
impact on the quality of sleep for
almost 50% of the 16 year olds surveyed. (Source)
A 2009 Nielsen study on teens and media found a 566 percent jump
in teen texting rates during the past two years. The average teen sent 435 texts
a month in early 2007. Now it's 2,899 per month
— 97 a day. (Source)
Videogame Age & Effects Study
The average age of an adult video game player is 35 - higher than previously
thought, a US study suggests.
A team from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
also found gamers were less healthy, fatter, and more
depressed than non-gamers. (Source)
Aug. 4, 2009 -- Too much “screen
time,” whether it's watching TV,
using a computer, or playing a video
game,
may raise the
blood pressure of young
children, a new study shows.
(Details
here)
'Teen Texting Tendonitis' the Latest Health
Epidemic?
details
here
Car-surfing injuries linked to video games
MTV Survey Warns of Loud Music's Impact on Hearing
TV Ads Trigger Mindless Eating ( July 1, 2009)
|
WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay
News) -- Watching food ads on TV leads to a boost in snacking
among children and adults, increasing the risk of weight gain,
U.S. researchers say. Yale University researchers conducted a series of experiments to test the effects of food commercials on television. One test found that children aged 7 to 11 who watched a half-hour cartoon that included food commercials ate 45 percent more snack food while watching the show than children who watched the same cartoon with non-food commercials. That increased amount of snacking would lead to a weight gain of nearly 10 pounds a year, unless it was countered by decreased intake of other foods or increased physical activity, the researchers said. In another experiment, adults who saw TV ads for unhealthy foods ate much more than those who saw ads that featured messages about good nutrition or healthy food. "This research shows a direct and powerful link between television food advertising and calories consumed by adults and children," lead author Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, said in a news release from the university. "Food advertising triggers automatic eating, regardless of hunger, and is a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic. Reducing unhealthy food advertising to children is critical," she said. The study appears in the July issue of the journal Health Psychology. (Source) |
Can Gaming Slow Mental Decline in the Elderly?
(TIME Magazine)
|
Advertising
sets heart racing - new CNN research study uses 'biometrics' to show
emotional responses to branding
http://www.cnnasiapacific.com/press/en/content/461/ |
Findings released June 15 from a brand new study by CNN International suggest that brands who choose multimedia campaigns to communicate their advertising messages are more memorable to consumers and are more likely to enhance perception of their brands. The results carry weight for brands that place their advertising in an engaging environment, prompting an emotional response from the audience. The CASE study (Cross-platform Advertising Study on Effectiveness and Engagement) consisted of a rigorous two stage approach. Stage one involved a multinational online study of cross-platform effectiveness in which consumers were exposed to diverse media experiences. Stage two measured attention and engagement through a variety of techniques including biometrics, eye tracking and in depth interviews. "We wanted to show that by complementing advertising on CNN TV with ads on CNN.com and CNN mobile, an advertiser can markedly increase campaign recall leading to positive shifts in brand attitudes', commented Duncan Morris, Vice President, Research, Turner International Asia Pacific. "The fact that these respondents were not primed for an advertising study makes these results even more poignant." Engagement and Biometrics Body responses such as heart rate, motion, respiratory rate and galvanic skin response (sweating) were translated into measures of "attention" and "engagement" - the Holy Grail for advertisers. These were collected by using a lightweight 'smart vest' which respondents wore while watching CNN programming and advertising. The biometric research proved that CNN television and online content prompted an emotional response from the audience. Perhaps contrary to popular belief that viewers disengage once scheduled programming ends, the results also showed that engagement actually can increase during ad breaks, as much as 10%. William Hsu, VP Advertising Sales Asia Pacific, CNN International added "In the current economic climate, CNN is committed to demonstrating ROI for every advertising dollar spent. This study shows it is content that provides the springboard for advertisers to secure meaningful connections with audiences. In conjunction with our recent PWC study, it provides valuable industry insight to help brands market smarter." ‘Getting your ad noticed' The level of attention an advertisement receives impacts the ability of respondents to remember the brand. When respondents viewed advertising online and on mobile, they were more attentive, increasing the likelihood of advertising being noticed and adding to the re-call of the overall campaign. For example, using the eye-tracking technology which measures the time viewers spend gazing at points on a web or mobile page, users eyes were on the video window on the CNN website for 66-80% of the time that the video story was playing. Video attention is higher still during the pre-roll ad. In fact, on average, the users' eyes are on the pre-roll ad for 77-87% of its duration. Cross-platform The research showed that despite the high cross-over between the audiences of all the CNN properties, the audience is in a different state of mind when online or using a mobile phone versus watching television. Generally audiences were more attentive (though not necessarily more engaged) when online or mobile than when watching television. For example, one in five consumers who were exposed to TV advertising for a well known bank were spontaneously able to re-call the brand advertised, however when online and mobile advertising were added, this figure rose to one in three. With video viewing online and television viewing both prompting a strong emotional response from respondents, by combining TV advertising with online advertising, brands are surely onto a winning formula. |
Glowing TV Screens Keeping Americans Up at Night (HealthDayNews, 6/8/09)
Today,
Conan
O'Brien,
Jon
Stewart and the Desperate Housewives
are more influential in determining
bedtimes -- and it may be contributing to many
Americans' chronic
sleep deprivation, a new study says.
In the study,
researchers looked at data about the sleep habits
and bedtime rituals of 21,475
participants aged 15 or older who completed the
American Time Use
Survey between 2003 and 2006.
In the two hours
around bedtime, TV viewing was the most common
activity, accounting for almost
50 percent of the activities undertaken in the time
before bed, according to the study to be presented
Monday at the Associated Professional Sleep
Societies annual meeting, in Seattle.
The finding means
that TV -- rather than hours past sunset or
biological signs -- has become the most
important signal for sleep.
And staying up to
catch the end of a favorite show may make people
stay up later than they otherwise
would. In the morning, their
alarm clocks may jar them awake earlier than
they would naturally awaken.
These facets of
modern life are potentially reducing sleep time
below what is physiologically required,
the researchers noted in a
news release from the
American Academy
of Sleep Medicine.
"Given the
relationship of short sleep duration to health
risks, there is concern that many Americans are
chronically under-sleeping due to lifestyle
choices," study co-author David Dinges, of the
University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine in
Philadelphia, said in the news release.
Americans should watch less late-night TV and go to work later in the morning, the researchers suggested.
"While the timing
of work may not be flexible, giving up some TV
viewing in the evening should be possible
to promote adequate sleep," said study co-author Dr.
Mathias Basner.
Getting less than
seven to eight hours of sleep daily can lead to
impaired alertness and has been linked to
higher rates of obesity, illness and death. Even so,
up to 40 percent of Americans are not getting the
recommended amount of sleep at night, according to
the news release.
On average, American children and teens
spend more than six hours a day with media such as TV, computers,
Internet,
video games and VCR or DVD players -- more time than they spend per day
receiving formal classroom
instruction, says Dr. Victor C. Strasburger of
the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque.
All this media access affects a variety of
health issues, he wrote in the
June 3
issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association, a
special theme issue on child and adolescent health.
"The media are not the leading cause of any
pediatric health problem in the United States, but they do make a
substantial contribution to many health problems," Strasburger said. Among
them: violence, sex, drugs, obesity
and eating disorders.
Parents, teachers and clinicians need to be
educated about these connections, and student education about
media should
be mandatory in schools, he recommended.
"Parents have to change the way their
children access the media -- not permitting TV sets or Internet connections
in the child's bedroom, limiting entertainment screen time to less than two
hours per day, and co-viewing with their
children and adolescents. Research
has shown that media effects are magnified significantly when there is a TV
set
in the child's or adolescent's bedroom," Strasburger wrote.
Study: TV
can impair speech development of young children
Originally published June 1,
2009
For every hour in front of
the TV, parents spoke 770 fewer words to children, according to a study of 329
children,
ages 2 months to 4 years, in the June issue of
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent
Medicine.
Adults usually speak about 941 words an hour.
Children vocalized less,
too, says author
Dimitri
Christakis of the
In some cases, parents may have spoken less because they sat a child in front of
a TV and left the room,
he says. In others, parents simply zoned out themselves while watching TV with a
child. Researchers
didn't note the content of the TV shows.
Parents may not realize how
little they interact with children when a TV is on, Christakis says. A mother
may think she's engaged with a baby because they're both on the floor playing
blocks. But if a TV is on in
the background, the two of them talk much less, he says.
That may help explain
earlier studies finding that babies who watch a lot of TV know fewer words,
although
they catch up to their peers by 16 months, Christakis says. "Babies learn
language from hearing it spoken," he says.
Christakis and his
colleagues fitted children with digital devices that recorded everything they
heard or said
one day a month for an average of six months. A speech-recognition program,
which could differentiate TV
content from human voices, compared the number of words exchanged when
televisions were on or off.
Victor Strasburger,
a professor of pediatrics at the University of New
"an excellent, creative study."
It's the seventh study to
suggest that TV hurts children's language development, Strasburger says. A March
report from Harvard Medical School found that watching TV neither helped nor
harmed children's language skills.
Though Christakis
acknowledges that there is still some debate about whether watching television
is harmful,
he says there's no evidence to show that it's helpful. That's why the American
Academy of Pediatrics
recommends no TV for babies under age 2.
"We need to avoid parking
babies in front of screens," Strasburger says. "Parents need to realize they
need
to be the primary entertainment for their babies. Parents are movie stars when
their kids are babies. It doesn't last long."
Shocking images on cigarette packs can deter smokers
GENEVA (Reuters) – Cigarette packages should show
graphic images of yellow
teeth, blackened gums,
protruding neck tumors and bleeding brains to alert smokers to their disease
risks, the World Health
Organization said on Friday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090529/hl_nm/us_tobacco_un
Posted on:
Monday, 11 May 2009, 06:40 CDT
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1686154/tv_ads_play_role_in_child_obesity/
According to a new study released on Friday,
junk food commercials constitute an average
of two-thirds of television
food advertisements shown during hours
children are most likely to be watching.
At the top
of the list were Germany and the United
States, whose junk food commercials made up
some 90 percent of
their televised food ads. At the bottom
were Britain and Australia with roughly 50
percent.
Researchers
say they are urging government action to
curb the amount of television marketing of
this sort in an effort to
combat youth obesity.
“Internationally, children are exposed to
high volumes of unhealthy food and beverage
advertising on television,” the research
group told the
European Congress on Obesity in
Amsterdam.
“Limiting this food marketing is an important preventative strategy for childhood obesity.”
Worldwide,
the
International Obesity Task Force
estimates that some 177 million children and
teens under the age of 18 are
overweight or obese. Of these, they say,
roughly 22 million are overweight children
under the age of five.
Among the
many risks associated with diabetes, one of
the most frequent amongst children is the
rapidly growing rate of type
2 diabetes, or non-inherited diabetes. The
expensive treatments associated with
diabetes have many governments concerned
that their already tightly-budgeted national
health systems could be stretched beyond
their limits.
The
increase in sedentary lifestyles, including
hours a day sitting in front of computers or
television, has also been identified
as a joint factor contributing to
skyrocketing obesity rates throughout the
western world.
“There is a
lot of attention on unhealthy food marketing
as an influence on childhood obesity and a
lot of governments are
reluctant to regulate,” said Bridget Kelly a
nutrition researcher for the
Cancer
Council NSW in Australia and co-author
of the study.
“So most countries in the study don’t have
regulations on food advertising.”
The study
examined television programming trends in
Australia, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe
and North and South America.
They observed that the number of
advertisements for fast food, sweets and
high-fat snacks significantly increased
during the times
when youths were most likely to be tuned in.
“Children
see around 4,000 to 6,000 food
advertisements on television a year and
between 2,000 and 4,000 are for unhealthy
foods,”
explained Kelley in an interview. “So even
if you are in countries that are advertising
less to children, that is still a lot.”
Researchers
concede, however, that it is difficult to
establish a direct causal connection between
junk food advertisements and obesity.
Still, they argue that television marketing
is a significant factor in shaping what kind
of foods children prefer.
Girls With Sexy Avatars Face Greater Risks Online
Avatars also give us parents a doorway to
discussing online profiles and the fact that what might seem cool to a
14-year-old will seem decidedly uncool to college admissions officers,
employers, and her boyfriend’s parents. “It’s the first snapshot people get
of you,” Noll says. “Younger adolescents don’t get this, because [social
networking] is so much a part of their everyday life.”
For more on the big and troubling issue on how popular culture
oversexualizes childhood, check out So Sexy So Soon, a book by Diane Levin
and Jean Kilbourne that came out last year. A parent's best defense, Levin
and Kilbourne say, is to talk to your kids early and often about what you
don’t like about sexual images in pop culture,
while also giving them a chance to tell you what they like, and why. (Here’s
my
interview with Levin about So Sexy So Soon,
along with my distillation of her
advice for parents.) Study after study
shows that the best predictor of a child safely
navigating the risks of the teenage years is having involved
parents—something that Noll found in her study, too. Here's more on
how parents can manage kids’ use of social media,
particularly networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.
So, kid, put a sweater on that avatar!
By Amanda Gardner HealthDay Reporter (NOTE: links embedded in this story added by Frank Baker)
WEDNESDAY, March 4 (HealthDay News) -- Young men who watched the movie American Pie with accompanying commercials for alcohol were more apt to grab a beer or glass of wine from the refrigerator, compared to those who watched a movie without the drinking prompts.
This study shows for the first time the effect of on-screen depictions of alcohol and their influence on consumers' behavior, said the researchers, who are from Canada and the Netherlands.
"It's one of those things the majority of people have assumed to be the case, but it's nice to have the empirical evidence," said Jeffrey T. Parsons, chair of psychology at Hunter College in New York City. Parsons was not involved with the study, which was published online March 4 in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism. (Full study available here)
But, Parsons added, the study had limitations.
"It was done just with young men, and there are a lot of differences in the role of gender and alcohol," he said. "It's also a Dutch study that used American movies. Part of me wonders if it's just bad American movies that make people drink."
The study is unlikely to be the last word on the subject, Parsons added.
The new research isn't the only new troubling data coming out on alcohol and alcohol abuse.
On Tuesday, a report in the March issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine said that an estimated 11 percent to 20 percent of U.S. teens have T-shirts, headwear, jewelry, key chains and other paraphernalia emblazoned with brands of alcoholic beverages. These children seem to be more prone to end up being binge drinkers, the Dartmouth researchers noted.
For the new study, 40 pairs of unsuspecting men aged 18 to 29 were invited into a lab that doubled as a "home cinema," complete with fridge (stocked with both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks), a leather couch, large-screen TV, nibbles and an ashtray.
The men, who were given the option of a free taxi home if they drank three or more bottles of beer or wine, were randomly assigned to watch American Pie with and without alcohol ads, or characters consuming alcohol, or 40 Days and 40 Nights, again with and without the alcohol content.
Those who watched the segments
that included alcohol drank an average of three 200-milligram
bottles of alcohol. Those watching the "neutral" segments drank
half that amount.
Dr. Kathryn J. Kotrla, chairwoman of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, said the new study was "reminiscent of the imaging studies, for example, looking at cocaine addiction."
"It would be fascinating to follow the study up with neuroimaging studies with alcoholics ... to see if the same reward pathways are triggered in the brain," she said. "Why that's so important is that it bypasses the debate, is alcoholism a failure of will or a disease? It puts [the debate] smack dab in the neuroscience arena, which, in fact, is where it needs to be."
LONDON (Reuters) – Children who watch television for more than two hours a day have twice the risk of developing asthma, British researchers reported Tuesday.
Asthma affects more than 300 million people worldwide and is the most common children's chronic illness. Symptoms include wheezing, shortness of breath, coughing and chest tightness.
A study published in the journal Thorax may help link asthma, estimated to account for one in 250 deaths globally each year, to obesity and lack of exercise, experts said.
"There has been a recent suggestion that breathing patterns associated with sedentary behavior could lead to developmental changes in the lungs and wheezing illnesses in children," Andrea Sherriff of the University of Glasgow and colleagues wrote.
Sherriff and colleagues studied more than 3,000 children from birth until nearly the age of 12.
The parents were questioned annually on wheezing symptoms among their children and whether a doctor had diagnosed asthma as they grew up. The researchers also analyzed how much television the children watched.
They did not consider video games or personal computers, which were not as common in the mid 1990s when the children were growing up, the researchers added.
The study found that 6 percent of children at around age 12 who had no symptoms of the disease growing up had asthma.
But children who watched television for more than two hours daily were almost twice as likely to have been diagnosed with the condition as those who watched less.
"The findings add to a wealth of evidence linking a lack of exercise and being overweight with an increased risk of asthma," Elaine Vickers of Asthma UK, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.
"But this study is the first to directly link sedentary behavior at a very young age to a higher risk of asthma later in childhood."
In some countries as many as 30 percent of children develop the inflammatory disease, according to the World Health Association.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Maggie Fox and Phakamisa Ndzamela)
Tuesday , February 24, 2009
Teenagers who are preoccupied with their Internet time may be more prone to aggressive behavior, researchers reported Monday.
In a study of more than 9,400 Taiwanese teenagers, the researchers found that those with signs of Internet "addiction" were more likely to say they had hit, shoved or threatened someone in the past year.
The link remained when the investigators accounted for several other factors — including the teenagers' scores on measures of self-esteem and depression, as well as their exposure to TV violence.
The findings, published online by the Journal of Adolescent Health, do not however prove that Internet addiction breeds violent behavior in children.
It is possible that violence-prone teenagers are more likely to obsessively use the Internet, explained lead researcher Dr. Chih-Hung Ko, of Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan.
However, the findings add to evidence from other studies that media — whether TV, movies or video games — can influence children's behavior. The also suggest that parents should pay close attention to their teenagers' Internet use, and the potential effects on their real-life behavior, Ko told Reuters Health.
According to Ko's team, some signs of Internet addiction include preoccupation with online activities; "withdrawal" symptoms, like moodiness and irritability, after a few Internet-free days; and skipping other activities to devote more time to online ones.
In this study, teenagers who fit the addiction profile generally were more aggression-prone than their peers. But the type of Internet activity appeared to matter as well.
Online chatting, gambling and gaming, and spending time in online forums or adult pornography sites were all linked to aggressive behavior. In contrast, teens who devoted their time to online research and studying were less likely than their peers to be violence-prone.
According to Ko, certain online activities may encourage kids to "release their anger" or otherwise be aggressive in ways they normally would not in the real world. Whether this eventually pushes them to be more aggressive in real life is not yet clear, the researcher said.
Ko recommended that parents talk to their children about their Internet use and their general attitudes toward violence.
SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health
TORONTO — High exposure to lyrics that describe degrading sex is associated with high levels of sexual behaviour in teens, a new study suggests.
The research, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, was conducted in three large urban high schools in the Pittsburgh area, and involved asking Grade 9 students about the number of hours a day they listen to music and their favourite musical artists.
"Music exposure is growing ... there is now
unprecedented access to music and it's also becoming more direct, more
explicit," said co-author
Dr.
Brian Primack of the
Center for Research on Health Care at the University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine.
"Adolescents are exposed to six to eight hours of mass media messages per day, and since it is such an important exposure, we need to know if this is affecting health."
He noted, for example, that data have shown that up to 25 per cent of American teenage girls have sexually transmitted diseases.
STDs are particularly problematic in poor communities, Primack said, and that was a reason for focusing on three urban high schools where about half the kids take part in a lunch program - indicating they fall below a certain income level.
"We divided the cohort into three ... those who were exposed to the lowest amount (of music with degrading references), those who were exposed to sort of the medium amount, those who were exposed to the most," he said.
"And those who were exposed to the most were more than twice as likely to have had sexual intercourse, and that's even controlling for all of the other factors that we looked at that we thought might be related to uptake of sexual intercourse."
One limitation of the findings was that the teenagers were self-reporting.
"We didn't actually have their iPods in our hands, but what we did was we asked people to report the number of hours that they listen, both on a weekday and a weekend day," Primack explained.
"It's an approximation because we can't ask them every single song that they've ever listened to, but the way it is with young people in this particular demographic, their favourite artist is generally quite representative of all of the things that they listen to."
Daniel Levitin, a cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, said the study "clearly adds to our body of knowledge about the connection between musical lyrics and ... experiences of young people."
But Levitin, author of the bestselling book "This is Your Brain on Music," said the study wasn't designed in a way that it could tell us about any causes of the young people's behaviour.
"The important thing to bear in mind is whatever it is that's causing young people to engage in increasingly risky sexual activity at a younger age - we don't know whether there's some third factor out there in the world that's causing them both to engage in that activity and to seek out this music."
He cautioned against extrapolating the findings to other centres, noting there might be a number of reasons Pittsburgh is special.
"They didn't do a study across all of the United States, let alone across all of North America. It's a possible limitation of the study. Maybe these results apply only to Pittsburgh, and you wouldn't find similar associations in Philadelphia or Calgary or Prince Edward Island, for that matter."
Jane Brown, a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said the findings corroborate a couple of previous studies.
"So now we have three studies that have found a similar relationship, so that helps support the notion that there is a relationship here, something's going on, something perhaps worth looking into."
Parents need to pay more attention to this, and help their teens choose healthier, less degrading music, she advised.
"Secondly, I would like to see the musicians' community take some responsibility for this," she said.
"And thirdly, we can teach what we call media literacy, which is to help kids be more critical media users, or more intelligent media users, so that they know it's not in their best interest to be modelling sexually degrading images."
Primack agreed with the need for media literacy.
"If we give young people the ability to analyze and evaluate all those messages for themselves, so they can hopefully understand a little bit more about the fact that these messages are not necessarily reflecting real life, then they might not be a prone to simply imitate what they hear."
(PhysOrg.com) -- Violent video games and movies make people numb to the pain and suffering of others, according to a research report published in the March 2009 issue of Psychological Science.
The report details the findings of two studies conducted by University of Michigan professor Brad Bushman and Iowa State University professor Craig Anderson.
The studies fill an important research gap in the literature on the impact of violent media. In earlier work, Bushman and Anderson demonstrated that exposure to violent media produces physiological desensitization—lowering heart rate and skin conductance—when viewing scenes of actual violence a short time later. But the current research demonstrates that violent media also affect someone's willingness to offer help to an injured person, in a field study as well as in a laboratory experiment.
The impact of violent media. New research shows that playing violent video games and watching violent moves make people less empathic and sensitive to the suffering of others.
"These studies clearly show that violent media exposure can reduce helping behavior," said Bushman, professor of psychology and communications and a research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research."People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song," he said.
In one of the studies, 320 college students played either a violent or a nonviolent video game for approximately 20 minutes. A few minutes later, they overheard a staged fight that ended with the "victim" sustaining a sprained ankle and groaning in pain.
People who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a nonviolent game—73 seconds compared to 16 seconds. People who had played a violent game were also less likely to notice and report the fight. And if they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a nonviolent game.
In the second study, the participants were 162 adult moviegoers. The researchers staged a minor emergency outside the theater in which a young woman with a bandaged ankle and crutches "accidentally" dropped her crutches and struggled to retrieve them. The researchers timed how long it took moviegoers to retrieve the crutches. Half were tested before they went into the theater, to establish the helpfulness of people attending violent vs. nonviolent movies. Half were tested after seeing either a violent or a nonviolent movie. Participants who had just watched a violent movie took over 26 percent longer to help than either people going into the theater or people who had just watched a nonviolent movie.
The studies are part of an on-going research program into the causes and consequences of human aggression conducted by Bushman, who is also affiliated with VU University Amsterdam.
Provided by University of Michigan
Media Exposure and Fast Food Consumption
(NaturalNews) When we slouch on the
couch and spend hours staring at that colorful electronic box called a
television, we are actually, subconsciously, taking in hours of subtle
indoctrination via TV commercials. At the same time, we are also allowing
ourselves to lapse into a sedentary lifestyle, snacking on junk food as a
complementary habit. And these cause-and-effect links are very real, as revealed
in a recent University of Minnesota study, which found that teens who watch more
than 5 hours of TV each day are more likely to become fast food junkies when
they reach young adulthood.
Details and Findings of Study
The study, published online in the International Journal of Behavioral
Nutrition and Physical Activity, had looked at data on 1,366 students from
high school and 564 students from middle school. Information on the number of
hours every day which the students spent watching TV was collated and compared
with information on their dietary habits five years later as they reached young
adulthood.
The researchers found that high school students who watched over 5 hours of TV
each day consumed less fruits, vegetables, whole grains and calcium-rich foods
as young adults, and instead had a higher intake of fast food, fried foods,
snack foods, sugary drinks as well as foods with trans fats.
It seems the advertisements for fast food restaurants and other similar junk
foods are having an impact. "Television watching impacts diet choices
adolescents make five years later," said Daheia Barr-Anderson, an assistant
professor of kinesiology and the leader of the study. She further conjectured
that snacking during TV time makes the young ones more likely to eat the foods
which are being advertised.
Important Issues
This study has brought our attention to an important issue - the impact of the
media is real and very pronounced. "This research tugs not so gently at the wool
in front of all of our eyes - revealing that heavy TV viewing, especially of
food advertising - makes a difference to our children`s diets," said Frederick J
Zimmerman, an assistant professor at the Child Health Institute of the
University of Washington.
"This research suggests that heavy TV-viewing adolescents consume about 200 more
calories per day than those who watch a moderate amount of TV. That is a lot of
calories by anyone`s count," he said. Zimmerman also added that these findings
will not be unexpected for people familiar with research connecting TV,
advertising and diet.
Parents Must Take Note
The kids are, well, still very young, and it is clear that parents have an
important role to play in influencing their habits and choices. This is another
key issue which we need to take note of. "Parents need to adhere to the American
Academy of Pediatrics` recommendation that children watch less than two hours of
quality television per day," said Barr-Anderson.
"Parents need to restrict what their kids are eating and try and provide a
better example for their kids, making sure they are getting the nutrients and
proper food that they need as opposed to the high-fatty foods, high-sugar foods,
low-nutrient-dense foods," she added.
Kimberly M Thompson, an associate professor of risk analysis and decision
science at the Harvard School of Public Health, agreed that parents play a
critical role. And this applies whether the cause of bad food choices is the TV
ads, the lapsing into sedentary lifestyles, or both.
"This study is a clear wake-up call that entertainment media matter when it
comes to health. Given the current obesity and overweight crisis in America,
this study provides clear evidence that kids and parents should make a point of
reducing sedentary time spent in front of a TV screen," she said.
The Young are in Trouble
Another recent worrying study on the state of health of our young ones include
how poor sleep and lack of sleep were found to be causing heightened blood
pressure, or a state of "prehypertension", in healthy adolescents. This increase
could not be explained by other factors such as obesity, socioeconomic status or
known comorbidities. Read more about that study
here.
Even more alarming was what a study which was presented at the American Heart
Association`s 2008 annual meeting in New Orleans revealed - that children and
teenagers had arteries which were as degenerated as middle aged adults. The
study had found that more than 50% of the 70 young persons who were involved in
the study were, by "vascular age" terms, about 3 decades older than their actual
age. Read more about that study
here.
Intuitively, we could probably link all the adverse health effects. Too much
late night TV, for example, would be a contributing factor for lack of sleep,
while overindulgence in junk foods also harms arterial and heart health.
What can parents do?
"For those looking to nudge their families in the right direction, implement a
rule in your home of no eating while the TV is on. Or if that`s too tough, then
insist that only fruits and
vegetables and water get consumed while viewing TV. You could also require that
for every hour of TV viewed, each member of the family needs to engage in at
least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise," suggested Thompson.
Sources
Adult Fast-Food Diets Tied to Too Much TV as Teen (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...)
Sleep quality and elevated blood pressure in adolescents. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...)
Obese Kids Have Middle-Aged Arteries (http://www.newsweek.com/id/168702)
Marlboro top choice of regular teen
smokers (AP)
The results led anti-smoking advocates to complain that the same advertising that's supposed to target adults is also influencing teens, even though smoking rates for that age group have dropped in recent years.
"Cigarettes are still the most heavily advertised drug in America," said Dr. Victor Strasburger, a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "It's sad."
The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 81 percent of established teen smokers preferred the same three brands favored by adults: Marlboro was the choice for 52 percent of high school students; Newport by 21 percent and Camel by 13 percent. For middle school students, the percentages were 43 percent, 26 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
Newport was the overwhelming choice for African-American students, with more than three-quarters of black high school smokers choosing that brand.
The results come from a survey of 54,301 regular smokers, part of the 2004 and 2006 National Youth Tobacco Survey of nearly 5 million 12- to 17-year-olds.
The findings mirror the adult population. The 2007 National Study on Drug Use and Health found that the most popular brands smoked by U.S. adults also were Marlboro, Newport and Camel.
David Sutton, a spokesman at Altria Group Inc., which owns Philip Morris USA and the Marlboro brand, said that adult influence was more likely a factor than advertising. He said his company has curtailed it by 46 percent in the last decade. Instead, he said the company focuses on direct-mail marketing to adults and advertising at retailers that sell its brands.
David Howard, a spokesman at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., maker of Camel cigarettes, said it's clear from Camel's third-place ranking that the company has succeeded in avoiding marketing to young people.
Both tobacco spokesmen also mentioned signs that the teen smoking rate is dropping. An annual survey by University of Michigan found that, in 2008, smoking rates among American teens were at the lowest levels since the survey began in 1991.
Even so, anti-smoking advocates are calling for even tougher restrictions on advertising and for more no-smoking campaigns. The CDC is urging Congress to give the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products and marketing — and encouraged funding for anti-smoking campaigns.
Such campaigns include the American Legacy Foundation's national "truth" campaign. Launched in 2000, it includes an ad showing young people unloading hundreds of body bags and stacking them in the street outside a major tobacco company to illustrate smoking-related deaths.
"We try to have teens rebel against tobacco companies by not smoking. The whole strategy is to make smoking not cool," said Donna Vallone, an official with the Legacy Foundation.
___
On the Net:
Monitoring the Future survey: http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/
American Legacy Foundation: http://www.americanlegacy.org/
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080918/CFTFKLOGO)
Several scientific studies released today provide powerful new evidence that tobacco marketing causes kids to smoke, while anti-tobacco advertising campaigns prevent smoking. These studies send a loud and clear message to the nation's policy makers: We need less tobacco marketing and more tobacco prevention.
It is critical that Congress this year pass legislation granting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate tobacco products and marketing, which among other things would crack down on tobacco marketing that appeals to kids. It is also imperative that Congress and the states increase funding for programs proven to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit.
CDC Study: Youth Smokers Overwhelmingly Prefer Three Most Heavily Advertised Brands
A study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds that the three most heavily advertised cigarette brands - Philip Morris' Marlboro, Lorillard's Newport and R.J. Reynolds' Camel - continue to be the preferred brands of youth smokers. These brands were preferred by 78.2 percent of middle school smokers and 86.5 percent of high school smokers. Marlboro is preferred by more high school smokers, 52.3 percent, than all other brands combined.
This study indicates that, despite limited
restrictions placed on tobacco marketing by the 1998 state tobacco
settlement, tobacco marketing continues to have a large and disproportionate
impact on the nation's youth. While tobacco companies claim they do not
market to kids, they're sure doing a good job of getting kids to use their
products. This study was published in the
Congress can protect our nation's children by granting the FDA authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products. This bill would impose specific restrictions on tobacco marketing that appeals to children. It would limit tobacco advertising in stores and in magazines with significant teen readership to black-and-white text only, eliminating the colorful images that depict smoking as cool and glamorous. It would ban outdoor tobacco advertising near schools and playgrounds, end tobacco sponsorships of sports and entertainment events, and require stores to place tobacco products behind the counter. The bill would also grant the FDA and the states authority to further limit tobacco marketing.
In addition to these marketing restrictions, the legislation would require larger and more effective health warnings, ban misleading terms such as "light" and "low-tar," strictly regulate all health claims about tobacco products, require disclosure of the contents of and changes to tobacco products, and empower the FDA to mandate changes in tobacco products, such as the reduction or removal of harmful ingredients.
Three Studies Finds truth(R) Prevention Campaign Reduces Smoking and Saves Money
In addition to the new CDC studies, three
new research papers find that truth(R), the national youth smoking
prevention campaign conducted by the American Legacy Foundation, has been
both highly effective and cost-effective in preventing America's youth from
starting to smoke. One study found that truth(R) was directly
responsible for keeping 450,000 teens from starting to smoke during its
first four years, while a second study found that the campaign not only paid
for itself in its first two years, but also saved between
These studies show that tobacco prevention
campaigns are a vital element of the overall effort to reduce tobacco use
and its devastating consequences. Unfortunately, both nationally and in the
states, these programs are badly underfunded and fall woefully short of the
It is critical that both the federal government and the states increase funding for programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit. As underscored by the new studies, the evidence is abundantly clear that these programs not only reduce smoking and save lives, they save money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish to skimp on funding for these programs.
Today's new studies follow a landmark
Tobacco use is the number one cause of
preventable death in
That is one of the conclusions of a new wide-ranging survey into British childhood, produced for the Children's Society.
It says that children are part of a new form of consumerism, with under 16 year-olds spending £3 billion of their own money each year on clothes, snacks, music, video games and magazines.
The report claims that some advertisers "explicitly exploit the mechanism of peer pressure, while painting parents as buffoons" and that in its most extreme form, advertising persuades children that "you are what you own".
In addition the "constant exposure" to celebrities through, TV soaps, dramas and chat shows is having a detrimental effect.
It says: "Children today know in intimate
detail the lives of celebrities who are richer than they will ever be, and
mostly better-looking. This exposure inevitably raises aspirations and reduces
self-esteem.
It adds the way celebrities are portrayed "automatically encourages the excessive pursuit of wealth and beauty."
This "media-driven consumerism" is having a negative effect on a child's wellbeing, the report says.
It highlights a study into the effect of consumerism on the psychological wellbeing of 10-13 year-olds.
That study found: "Other things being equal, the more a child is exposed to the media (television and Internet), the more materialistic she becomes, the worse she relates to her parents and the worse her mental health."
The Good Childhood inquiry, compiled by more than 35,000 contributors is independent of the Church of England affiliated society but has been endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams.
It takes an in-depth look at the changing face of childhood and family life in Britain, and the challenges facing youngsters today.
The report has found that only a quarter of children with mental health problems get any specialist help, and one in 10 five to 16-year-olds now have mental health issues, ranging from anxiety or depression to conduct disorders such as destructive behaviour.
It claims that the upward trend of violence in the media in general, is making children violent and causing tension within the family.
The report says: "We know from controlled studies that exposure to violence can breed violence.
"So it seems likely that the upward trend in
media violence is helping to produce the upward trend in violent behaviour – and
also the growth of psychological conflict in family relationships.
The report also notes that commercial pressures have led to the "premature sexualisation" of young people.
It notes that young people are having sex earlier because of "many forces", including "more privacy when both parents work, more contraception, commercial pressures toward premature sexualisation, and fundamental changes in attitude".
The report recommends that sex and relationships, and understanding of the media should be a compulsory part of the personal, social and health curriculum.
And it says advertising of unhealthy foods and alcohol should be banned before 9pm.
Alcohol advertising and marketing may lead to underage drinking. A large systematic review of more than 13,000 people, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, suggests that exposure to ads and product placements, even those supposedly not directed at young people, leads to increased alcohol consumption.
Lesley Smith and David Foxcroft from Oxford Brookes University collated information from seven rigorously selected studies, featuring information on 13,255 participants. This systematic review, funded by the Alcohol and Education Research Council (AERC), is the first to study the effects of advertising, product placement in films, games, sporting events and music videos, depictions of drinking in various media, and exposure to product stands in shops. According to Smith, "Our work provides strong empirical evidence to inform the policy debate on the impact of alcohol advertising on young people, and policy groups may wish to revise or strengthen their policy recommendations in the light of this stronger evidence".
The authors found that exposure to TV alcohol advertisements was associated with an increased tendency to drink, as were magazine advertisements and concession stands at sporting events or concerts. Hours spent watching films, playing games and watching music videos also correlated with young peoples' tendency to consume alcoholic beverages. Smith said, "All seven studies demonstrated significant effects across a range of different exposure variables and outcome measures. One showed that for each additional hour of TV viewing per day the average risk of starting to drink increased by 9% during the following 18 months. Another found that for each additional hour of exposure to alcohol use depicted in popular movies there was a 15% increase in likelihood of having tried alcohol 13 to 26 months later".
The authors recommend that counter-advertising, social marketing techniques and other prevention options such as parenting programmes, price increases and limiting availability may be useful to limit alcohol problems in young people.
Notes to Editors
1. The effect of alcohol advertising, marketing
and portrayal on drinking behaviour in young people: systematic review of
prospective cohort studies
Lesley A Smith and David R Foxcroft
BMC Public Health (in press)
During embargo, article available here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1206897133174347_article.pdf?random=783367
After the embargo, article available at journal website: http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcpublichealth/
Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.
Article citation and URL available on request at press@biomedcentral.com on the day of publication
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Concerned that your adolescent is watching to much TV? A new study gives parents good reason to be concerned. Researchers reported this week that greater exposure to TV during the teenage years appears to raise the risk of depression in young adulthood, especially among males.
Dr. Brian A. Primack, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and colleagues studied the media habits of roughly 4,100 healthy non-depressed adolescents. They asked the adolescents how many hours they spent during the last week watching TV or videos, playing computer games or listening to the radio.
The adolescents reported an average of 5.68 hours of media exposure each day, including 2.3 hours of TV viewing per day.
Seven years later (at an average age of 21.8), the study subjects were screened and 308 (7.4 percent) had developed symptoms of depression.
According to the report, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, for each hour of TV viewed per day, the teens had a statistically significant greater likelihood of developing depression in young adulthood.
Given the same amount of media exposure, young women were less likely to develop symptoms of depression than were young men.
"We did not find a consistent relationship between development of depressive symptoms and exposure to videocassettes, computer games, or radio," they report.
There are several possible ways by which media exposure could boost the risk of depression, the researchers say. The time spent watching TV or using other electronic media may replace time spent socializing, participating in sports or engaging in intellectual activities - all of which may protect against depression.
Watching TV at night may disrupt sleep, which is important for normal brain and emotional development. In addition, messages transmitted through the media may reinforce aggression and other risky behaviors, interfere with identity development or inspire fear and anxiety, the researchers note.
This study, they conclude, "breaks new ground in linking media use in adolescence to the development of depressive symptoms in young adulthood."
SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, February 2009.
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Spending a lot of time watching TV, playing video games and surfing the Web makes children more prone to a range of health problems including obesity and smoking, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
U.S. National Institutes of Health, Yale University and the California Pacific Medical Center experts analyzed 173 studies done since 1980 in one of the most comprehensive assessments to date on how exposure to media sources impacts the physical health of children and adolescents.
The studies, most conducted in the United States, largely focused on television, but some looked at video games, films, music, and computer and Internet use. Three quarters of them found that increased media viewing was associated with negative health outcomes.
The studies offered strong evidence that children who get more media exposure are more likely to become obese, start smoking and begin earlier sexual activity than those who spend less time in front of a screen, the researchers said.
Studies also indicated more media exposure also was linked to drug and alcohol use and poorer school performance, while the evidence was less clear about an association with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they added.
"I think we were pretty surprised by how overwhelming the number of studies was that showed this negative health impact," NIH bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the researchers in the report released by the advocacy group Common Sense Media, said in a telephone interview.
"The fact that it was probably more a matter of quantity than actual content is also a concern. We have a media-saturated life right now in the 21st century. And reducing the number of hours of exposure is going to be a big issue."
Experts for decades have worried about the impact on young viewers of the violence and sexual content in some TV programs, movies and video games. Another issue is that kids are spending time sitting on a couch watching TV or playing computer games when they could be running around outside.
One study cited in the report found that children who spent more than eight hours watching TV per week at age 3 were more likely to be obese at 7. And research shows that many U.S. children, even toddlers, watch far more.
Dr. Cary Gross of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, another of the researchers, said TV and other media content can have a profound impact on children's attitudes and beliefs, most notably among teens.
He cited a U.S. study by the RAND research organization published in November that showed that adolescents who watched more programing with sexual themes had a higher risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy.
Thirteen of 14 studies that evaluated sexual behavior found an association between media exposure and earlier initiation of sexual behavior, the researchers said.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Philip Barbara)
 |
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Yale University said they were surprised that so many studies pointed in the same direction. In all, 173 research efforts, going back to 1980, were analyzed, rated and brought together in what the researchers said was the first comprehensive view of the topic. About 80 percent of the studies showed a link between a negative health outcome and media hours or content.
"We need to factor that in as we consider our social policies and as parents think about how they raise their kids," said lead researcher Ezekiel J. Emanuel, director of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, which took on the project with the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media. "We tend not to think of this as a health issue, and it is a health issue."
The average modern child spends nearly 45 hours a week with television, movies, magazines, music, the Internet, cellphones and video games, the study reported. By comparison, children spend 17 hours a week with their parents on average and 30 hours a week in school, the study said.
"Our kids are sponges, and we really need to remember they learn from their environment," said coauthor Cary P. Gross, professor at Yale School of Medicine. He said researchers found it notable how much content mattered; it was not only the sheer number of hours of screen time. Children "pick up character traits and behaviors" from those they watch or hear, he said.
Marcella Nunez-Smith, a lead author and also a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, described the project as a "mammoth" undertaking that spanned more than 18 months.
In probing childhood obesity, for example, researchers found 73 studies over the past three decades, with 86 percent showing a negative association with media exposure. The studies most central to the analysis were large high-quality efforts and controlled for other factors.
Researchers are not interested in any sort of censorship, Nunez-Smith said, but rather an increased awareness among parents, teachers and society at large. "It really is a wake-up call," she said.
The study did not touch on issues of violence and media, which researchers said was systematically reviewed by others. Researchers also excluded analysis of advertising or marketing. Most studies used in the analysis, as it turned out, focused on movies, music and television. Researchers said a big gap was the lack of research on the effects of the Internet, cellphones, social-networking sites and video games.
In their study, they rated as above average evidence to support the link between media exposure and drug use, alcohol use and low academic achievement. Evidence was weaker for the association with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. "It does not mean the link is not there, but the research evidence has not gotten there yet," Gross said.
The report's authors hope it will be taken to heart by parents, as well as educators, pediatricians and policymakers. They came up with suggestions for each group, and James P. Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, suggested that parents get involved in what their children see, hear and play -- and for how long.
"It's as important as going to their parent-teacher conferences or going over their report cards," Steyer said. "You have to know what Facebook is, and YouTube and MySpace and Twitter are, even though you grew up with 'Gilligan's Island' and 'All in the Family.' "
The new report was a systematic review of every study since 1980 that met set scientific criteria and examined media effects on obesity, tobacco, drug and alcohol use, sexual behavior, low academic achievement and ADHD.
Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the market-oriented think tank Progress and Freedom Foundation, said it is important to recognize that "correlation does not equal causation" in research studies. He said he looked forward to reading the studies that the report is based on and was glad that there was no call for regulation.
Those involved in the project said they were not opposed to children using media and noted that several studies reached positive conclusions, including one for adolescents who used the Internet more frequently.
The issue, said Steyer, is: "How do we make this the most positive experience it can be? How do we get the most educational value . . . and how do we limit the negative effects?"
| Report: Mass media harms kids |
|
||||||||||||
Researchers have done individual studies for years to learn how media affect children. A review released today, which analyzed 173 of the strongest papers over 28 years, finds that 80% agree that heavy media exposure increases the risk of harm, including obesity, smoking, sex, drug and alcohol use, attention problems and poor grades.
Some of the links are particularly strong. For example, 93% of studies found that children with greater media exposure have sex earlier. Authors say the soundest studies are those linking media use with obesity, while the evidence linking media exposure to hyperactivity is weaker.
The study provides overwhelming evidence of the importance of limiting children's use of media and teaching them to critically evaluate the ever-growing volume of text, images and sounds with which they are bombarded, says co-author Ezekiel Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health. He says the report also urges Hollywood and technology makers to create entertainment that is less toxic and more family-friendly.
"The idea that this is having a really measurable adverse impact on health makes it important to take this seriously," Emanuel says. "Every year, we have 4 million new kids. How long are we going to wait?"
The average child spends nearly 45 hours a week immersed in media — almost three times the amount of time they spend with their parents, according to the report, commissioned by Commonsense Media, a non-partisan watchdog group. In comparison, children spend an average of 30 hours in school.
Keeping an eye on children's media use is tougher today, says Jane Brown, a journalism and mass communication professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who was not involved in the report. In the past, families often watched TV together, and parents could easily change the channel or voice their disapproval. Today's technology often isolates children, who may tune out their families to concentrate on a cellphone screen only they can see.
Even pediatricians struggle to stay connected to their children. Victor Strasburger, a pediatrics professor at the University of New Mexico who was not involved in the study, says he took away his 15-year-old daughter's phone when he caught her text-messaging at Thanksgiving dinner.
Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist at the University of Maryland who also was not involved in the study, says the country needs to address the onslaught of negatives images. He says children today have greater exposure to online pornography and Internet "hate sites" that attack minorities and gays.
The study's authors say policymakers also need to establish "clear limits" on marketing products such as junk food to children.
Ignoring these problems, Brody says, will only lead to even higher rates of childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes, violence and teen pregnancy.
"At some point," Brody says, "we are all going to be paying for this."
In what researchers call the first report of its kind, a review of 173 studies about the effects of media consumption on children asserts that a strong correlation exists between greater exposure and adverse health outcomes.
“Coach potato does, unfortunately, sum it up pretty well,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chairman of the bioethics department at the institutes’ clinical center, one of the study’s five reviewers.
The report should compel lawmakers to underwrite media education efforts and public service advertising campaigns and should motivate the entertainment industry to be more “responsible and responsive,” said Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, which helped to finance the study.
“The research is clear that exposure to media has a variety of negative health impacts on children and teens,” he said.
Dr. Emanuel, Mr. Steyer and others plan to brief Washington policy makers on the study on Tuesday. Joined by researchers at Yale University and California Pacific Medical Center, Dr. Emanuel’s team analyzed almost 1,800 studies conducted since 1980 and identified 173 that met the criteria the researchers set.
In a clear majority of those studies more time with television, films, video games, magazines, music and the Internet was linked to rises in childhood obesity, tobacco use and sexual behavior. A majority also showed strong correlations — what the researchers deemed “statistically significant associations” — with drug and alcohol use and low academic achievement.
The evidence was somewhat less indicative of a relationship between media exposure and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the seventh health outcome that was studied.
Dr. Emanuel, whose brother, Rahm, is the president-elect’s chief of staff, said he was surprised by how lopsided the findings were. “We found very few studies that had any positive association” for children’s health, he said.
Researchers sought to look at the health effects of a wide array of media and distill 30 years of research into a simple message. “The average parent doesn’t understand that if you plop your kids down in front of the TV or the computer for five hours a day, it can change their brain development, it can make them fat, and it can lead them to get involved in risky sexual activity at a young age,” Mr. Steyer said.
Acknowledging that socioeconomic status and other factors can affect children’s health, Dr. Emanuel said the researchers chose studies that controlled for outside variables and ranked the strength of evidence accordingly.
Mr. Steyer said he was surprised to find an absence of research into the impact of new technologies. “Media has evolved at a dizzying pace, but there’s almost no research about Facebook, MySpace, cellphones, et cetera,” he said.
His organization, which was founded in 2003 and provides family-oriented reviews and ratings of Web sites, television shows and video games, intends to push for more research into the media’s effects on children and the setting of limits on advertising to children.
Mr. Obama has shown interest in the subject, telling parents to “turn off the television set and put the video games away” in speeches and running a commercial during the campaign, “Turn It Off,” that focused on education.
While Dr. Emanuel wouldn’t say if the study was a subject at Thanksgiving dinner with his brother, he said that more research into media’s effects on children’s health was necessary.
“We have to be concerned about what’s on TV, but we also have to be concerned about how much of the day kids are actually interacting with TV and other media,” he said.
A new
"study of
studies" lays partial blame for a number of childhood health and
safety risks at the doorstep of the media, all kinds of media, and
recommends policymakers restrict ads, promote media education, among
other steps.
And that recommendation comes from a group
of executives that includes a possible future FCC chairman or
communications policy czar.
The overwhelming majority of studies show
that media exposure is bad for kids' health, from making them fatter
to encouraging drug and alcohol and tobacco use, to hurting their
grades. That is according to a review of 173 studies conducted since
1980 on the impact of media on children's health and development.
The review was undertaken with the backing
of kids activist group Common Sense and the National Institutes of
Health. It looked at what Common Sense characterized as "the best"
studies, including evaluating them against each other for the
relative strength of the findings.
One of Common Sense's advisory board members
is Julius Genachowski, a college friend and advisor to Barack Obama
who is currently helping shape the adminisration's approach to
communications policy as a member of its tech transition team.
The study review was necessary, says Common
sense, because kids spend 45 hours a week with media, while only 30
hours in school and 17 hours with their parents. Media was defined
as movies, the Internet, video and computer games, magazines and
music, though advertising, journalism, and public service
announcements were exluded.
The exclusion of advertising seemed curious
since one of the conclusions from the study was to restrict
advertising.
The review concluded that since 1980, 80% of
the 173 studies "concluded that increased media exposure was
associated with a negative health outcome," with the greatest impact
coming on childhood obesity, tobacco use and sexual behavior. In
addition to those three, the studies looked at drug use, alchohol
use, low academic achievement, and attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder.
Only one study came up with a correlation
between exposure to specific media and a positive outcome--for
certain Web pages and better school performance--although seven
studies found a correlation between media quantity and better
health.
The study panel recommends that parents take
a more active role in limiting, balancing and talking about media;
that policymakers limit the ads, fund media literacy and fund more
research; that the media better police their content, better educate
families about it, encourage kids to limit their consumption, and
create better educational media, and that schools adopt a media
literacy curriculum that includes Internet safety.
The "expert panel" review of the studies (by
the Yale University School of Medicine, NIH and the California
Pacific Medial Center) comes as Democrats prepare to take over the
White House as well as strengthened majorities in both houses of
Congress.
This study and other recently-issued studies linking media and behavior could provide ammunition for newly empowered Democrats. That includes Jay Rockefeller, a strong critic of the media's impact on kids, who is taking over the Senate Commerce Committee; and Ed Markey (D-MA), a critic of snack food marketing to kids. Markey is already chairman of the powerful House Telecommunications Subcomittee, but could become even more powerful since new Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is expected to defer more communications issues to Markey and focus more on energy issues.
December 2,
2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Greater exposure of children
and teenagers to television, music, movies and other
media is linked to obesity, tobacco use and other
negative health issues, according to a
study published
on Tuesday.
"The results clearly show that there is a strong correlation between media exposure and long-term negative health effects to children," said Ezekiel Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health, lead researcher on the study.
The study, "Media and Child and Adolescent Health: A Systematic Review," was done by the Yale University School of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and California Pacific Medical Center and published by Common Sense Media.
It looked at the best studies on media and health from the last 28 years, a total of 173 in all, and found that 80 percent of them showed that greater media exposure led to negative health effects in children and adolescents.
The study examined media exposure and seven health outcomes: tobacco use, early sexual behavior, childhood obesity, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, low academic performance, drug use and alcohol use.
"This review is the first ever comprehensive evaluation of the many ways that media impacts children's physical health," said Emanuel, whose brother, Rahm Emanuel, is chief of staff to president-elect Barack Obama.
The strongest link was found between media and obesity with 86 percent of 73 studies finding a strong relationship between increased screen time and obesity.
Eight-eight percent of 24 studies examining media and tobacco use found a statistically significant relationship between increased media exposure and an increase in smoking at an early age.
Of eight studies on media and drug use, 75 percent found a statistically significant relationship between media exposure and drug use while 80 percent of 10 studies reported a statistically significant association between media exposure and early alcohol use.
Sixty-five percent of 31 studies evaluated reported a statistically significant association between increased media exposure and poor academic outcomes such as low standardized test scores or grades.
Sixty-two percent of 26 studies which analyzed the number of hours spent watching television reported a significant relationship between greater media exposure and low academic achievement.
On a positive note, one study of Internet use did find that increased access to certain types of websites was associated with better school performance.
Thirteen of 14 studies (93 percent) found a statistically significant association between media exposure and early sexual behavior.
As for attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, nine of 13 studies (69 percent) found an association between media exposure and increased attention problems.
According to the study, the average child or adolescent spends nearly 45 hours per week with media, compared with 17 hours with parents and 30 hours in school.
The study's authors said most of the quality studies available focused on television, movies and music and said future research should look at the impact of the Internet, video games and cellphones.
"This study provides an important jumping-off point for future research that should explore both the effects of traditional media content and that of digital media -- such as video games, the Internet, and cellphones -- which kids are using today with more frequency," said Emanuel.
The authors of the study recommended that parents place limits on the amount of media their children consume, ensure they watch age-appropriate programs and encourage them to spend more time playing outside.
"Parents and educators must consider the effects of media when they're trying to address issues with their child's health," said James Steyer, chief executive and founder of Common Sense Media.
“Media are
increasingly pervasive in the
lives of children
and adolescents # the average
kid today spends nearly
45 hours per week with media,
compared with 17 hours
with parents and 30 hours in
school. However, until
now there has been very little
comprehensive analysis of
the different research tracking
the impact of media on
children’s health.”
Thus begins the executive summary of a metatstudy on the relationship between use of media and adolescent health. The research results were published December 2nd by the advocacy group Common Sense Media.
The study was undertaken by the National Institutes of Health, the Yale University School of Medicine, and the California Pacific Medical Center, and analyzed the “best [research] studies” undertaken since 1980 on this topic. One hundred seventy three “best studies” were identified.
Of specific interest was the impact of increased media usage on:
- obesity
- tobacco use
- drug use
- alcohol use
- low academic achievement
- sexual behavior
- Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Although the researchers attempted to assess studies related to the usage of all media (the internet, magazines, movies, music, television, and video games), the researchers found that “most of the quality studies” investigated only the impact on adolescenthealth of movies, television and music.
Of the “best studies,” 127 evaluated the relationship between the hours adolescents spent on media usage and health outcome. Seventy five percent of these 127 studies demonstrated an increase number of hours were associated with a “negative health outcome” and 20% showed no statistically significant relationship. Seven studies (6%) showed a positive relationship between media usage and some measure health outcome.
In the findings below, statistically significant means the results were unlikely to have occurred by chance.
Obesity: increased media usage was associated with increased incidence of obesity and increased weight gain over time. (Of 73 studies, 63 (86%) showed this association as statically significant.) A single longitudinal study begun with 5,493 three year old children found that children watching more than 8 hours of television “were significantly more likely to be obese at age seven.”
Tobacco usage: increased media usage was associated with increased smoking, which was defined as “”children trying smoking, or beginning to smoke at an earlier age.” (Of 24 studies, 21 (88%) showed this association as statically significant.)
Drug Usage: increased media usage was associated with increased drug usage, defined as “past or current use of specific recreational drugs including cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines, and ecstasy.” (Of 8 studies, 6 (75%) showed this association as statically significant.)
Alcohol Usage: increased media usage was associated with increased alcohol usage. (Of 10 studies, 8 (80%) showed this association as statically significant.)
Low academic achievement: increased media usage was shown to have a negative impact on academic achievement “measured through standardized test scores or school grades.” (Of 31 studies, 20 (65%) showed this association as statically significant.)
Sexual behavior: increased media usage was associated with “a more rapid progression of initiation of sexual behavior.’ (Of the 14 studies, 13 (93%) showed this association as statically significant.)
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): increased media usage was associated with “increased attention problems.” (Of the 13 studies, 9 studies (69%) showed this association as statically significant.)
Too often, a single research study can fall victim to the “umbrella/rain” correlation fallacy. Technically known as “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” or Post hoc thinking, it can be reduced to “X happened, Y happened, therefore X caused Y to happen.”
The fallacy lies in the assumed directionality. On days that it rains, we see many people with umbrellas. Did the increased number of people with umbrellas cause the rain to fall, or did the impending rain cause people to carry umbrellas? Does increased media usage lead to obesity, or are obese people more likely to watch more television?
By rigorous analysis of a large number of “best studies,” a metastudy can avoid the correlation or Post Hoc fallacy.
Of the advantages of a metastudy, one is that it pulls together all printed research on a subject, in contrast to the single studies which often make the news.
In gathering the research studies for a quality metastudy, typically a panel independent of the reviewers ranks each of the collected studies as to quality of research methodology and quantity of subjects in each study. A quality metastudy can control for study variation and can utilize statistical methods such as regression techniques which may not be appropriate in small N studies.
Metastudies are not without their disadvantages.
Unless well defined and unless the input is independently evaluated and controlled, a metastudy can have the disadvantage of investigator bias or weak study bias.
A further disadvantage of metastudies of published research is that unpublished results are ignored, thus skewing the results (Studies which result in a null (no) relationship between two variables are seldom published. Thus if there are 1,000 studies of media and health outcomes which find no relationship, these are “lost” as the researchers collect the studies which show a relationship.)
