Infant educational videos have blossomed into a $20-billion dollar business, but a new study indicates that products like “Baby Einstein” and “Brainy Baby” do more harm than good. The prestigious journal Pediatrics published research from the University of Washington showing that for each hour a day that babies watched these DVD’s, they added six to eight fewer words to their vocabularies compared to other infants their age.
It’s not that the “Baby Einstein” programming directly harms the children, but it does take them away from interaction with parents or other caregivers that would produce much stronger developmental results. By the same token, the problem with heavy TV watching for adults isn’t that the broadcast offerings are directly corrupting or poisonous, it’s just that in our crowded schedules giving passive hours to the boob tube takes precious time away from more enriching, worthwhile and satisfying engagement with real people and the real world.
-TownHall.com
