The notion seems like common sense: Children who watch lots of television tend to be more overweight when compared with the general population of American kids. And new research does bear out this statistical correlation, though the relationship is weaker than might be imagined. Solving the problem of an overweight child is apparently not as easy as switching off the nightly Nickelodeon lineup or limiting the night’s television watching to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
The latest study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month, examined 4,063 children between the ages of 8 and 16. The results indicated that as time spent watching TV increased, skinfold thickness (a simple measure of body fat) expanded, regardless of frequency of vigorous activity.
Twenty-six percent of the kids watched four or more hours of television per day; two-thirds viewed at least two hours daily. And those numbers don’t include time spent watching videos or playing video games. In fact, data from Nielsen Media Research indicate that the typical American child between 2 and 17 will spend the equivalent of three entire years of waking hours in front of TV programming alone. There are no good data available on VCR and video game use.
“We have found in our samples that the majority of children have televisions in their bedrooms,” said Dr. Thomas N. Robinson, a Stanford University pediatrician who wrote an accompanying editorial in the recent JAMA issue. “This is Palo Alto (Calif.), but the trend can’t be that far off the norm.”
On the other hand, another study of 5,100 primary-school children published last month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that vigorous activity, television viewing and video game playing could not statistically predict which children were fat.
The researchers observed kids in California, Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas from 3rd through 5th grades, measuring the children on a body mass index scale that factors height and weight. Thirty percent of the girls and 28 percent of the boys were found to be overweight, compared with 14 percent of all American kids who are considered obese or more than 20 percent over a healthful weight. In addition, the study found that overweight children tend “not to grow out of it” between ages 9 and 11, said Johanna Dwyer, a professor at Tufts University’s School of Nutrition in Boston.
Beyond the potential social stigma, what’s worrisome to Dwyer about the overweight children in the study is that they showed signs of early heart disease, including high blood pressure and cholesterol. Though research is yet to be carried out, she suspects “computer obesity” is a rising trend that will affect children adversely as they grow into adulthood.
“It is active for the mind,” Dwyer said, “but the kids’ bodies are like puddles of inertia.”
For the most part, it is television that gets blamed for the doubling in the number of overweight children since 1980. Yet even Robinson, who specializes in intervention programs to encourage children to stop watching so much TV, says television is not the only culprit.
“More is blamed on TV than deserved,” he said. “Other habits, especially poor eating habits, need to be analyzed.”
Nonetheless, Robinson points out that television commercials often advertise just the sort of high-sugar, high-fat junk foods that children like to eat (often while watching favorite shows) but should consume only in moderation. Television thus forms a powerful “1-2 paunch,” combining the sales pitch for unhealthy foods with a decrease in time available for play, physical activity, imagination and creative endeavors.
Now Robinson and other Stanford researchers are following children over several years before they become overweight, seeking to answer the question of whether TV viewing causes obesity or is simply part of an overweight child’s behavior pattern. He acknowledges that fatness among children is a complex issue, but is confident that reducing TV time can improve physical and mental health significantly.
“There are other researchers looking at television viewing and aggression on the playground, and also TV and standardized test scores,” said Robinson.
The Stanford TV intervention team — which includes one female scientist the schoolchildren affectionately call “the TV lady” — is zeroing in on 3rd- and 4th-graders. This is an age, Robinson explained with a chuckle, when kids still want to impress adults.
Robinson said most parents he meets want to reduce their family’s TV viewing but don’t know how to achieve that, or don’t believe they have the time to supervise changes, or both. He recommended an approach to changing viewing habits that begins with the kids themselves. Parents start by getting children to monitor how much TV they watch, then encourage them to think about other activities to do in that time. The final step is setting up a “TV budget” and goals for substitute activities.
“We ask the kids and parents to create a reward system,” Robinson said. “But we discourage any connection to money or new toys. The incentives should be outings or other pursuits that involve the family or at least one parent.
“Few things are as reassuring to kids at this age as being together as a family or meeting parents’ approval.”
Yet parents should take note: The benefits of togetherness are limited when everyone is parked in front of the TV set.
