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biological impact of
watching TV
While controversy continues to surround the way the content of screen media affects our
thoughts and behaviour, a growing body of empirical evidence is indicating that watching
television causes physiological changes, and not for the better. Most of these effects occur
irrespective of the type of programme people watch – whether it is sex and violence or the
Teletubbies. It is the medium, not the message.
Aric Sigman
W
atching television is now the years of 24 hour-days watching television.
industrialised world’s main pas- The average six-year-old will have
time, taking up more of our time already watched more than one full year
than any other single activity except work of their lives. When other screen time is
Title image: Young child and sleep. According to the Broadcasters’ included, the figure is far higher. Children
engrossed in a television Audience Research Board (BARB) in aged 11 to 15 now spend 55% of their
programme. Photo: Oscar
Burriel/ Science January 2004, by the age of 75 the average waking lives – 53 hours a week, seven and
Photo Library Briton will have spent more than twelve a half hours a day – watching TV and
computers, an increase of 40% in a decade aspects of attention later on, what mecha-
(BMRB, 2004). More than half of three- nisms may be involved?
year-olds now have a TV set in their bed- Television elicits what Pavlov first
rooms. (Rideout et al, 2003) described as the orienting response, our
However, the biological sciences are fast instinctive sensitivity to movement and
becoming the new arena for examining sudden changes in vision or sound. The
the effects of society’s favourite pastime. orienting response to television is apparent
And in industrialised societies, the find- almost from birth: infants, when lying on
ings are set to re-cast the role of the tele- their backs on the floor, will crane their
vision screen as the greatest unacknowl- necks around 180 degrees to watch (Kubey
edged public health issue of our time. and Csikszentmihalyi, 2004). Twenty years
ago, studies began to look at whether the
Attention and cognition medium of television alone – the stylistic
In August 1999, the American Academy of techniques of cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sud-
Pediatrics (AAP) issued guidelines recom- den noises, not the content of the pro-
mending that children under the age of gramme – activates this orienting
two watch no television or any screen response. By watching how electro-
entertainment at all because television encephalogram (EEG) responses were
‘can negatively affect early brain develop- affected, Reeves et al found that these sty-
ment’ and that children of all ages should listic techniques can indeed trigger invol-
not have a television in their bedroom. untary physiological responses of detecting
This announcement has more recently and attending to movement – dynamic
been followed by a study of 2,500 children stimuli – something television has in
(Christakis et al, 2004) published in their abundance. These techniques also cause us
journal, Pediatrics, looking at whether to continue to pay attention to the screen.
early exposure to television during criti- Most of our stares at a television screen
cal periods of synaptic development would are highly prone to termination, lasting
be associated with subsequent attentional less than three seconds. But as we continue
problems. to stare, our stare becomes progressively
About 5% of children now exhibit atten- less fragile gaining a powerful attentional
tion deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), inertia after about 15 seconds. By increas-
and its incidence appears to be increasing. ing the rate of edits – camera changes in
Although genetic inheritance accounts for the same visual scene – one can increase
some of the prevalence of ADHD, and the subject’s physiological arousal along
despite decades of research, little thought with attention to the screen.
has gone in to the potentially crucial role Modern television has increased the use
that early childhood experiences may have of these stylistic techniques. A study of
on the development of attentional problems. the pace and editing speed of Sesame
Christakis and his colleagues wondered Street over 26 years observed that the
if there was an omnipresent environmental number of editing cuts on this popular
agent that is putting some children at risk educational children’s programme actually
of developing ADHD. They found that doubled during this period. Others have
early television exposure was associated compared the attentional demands of
with attentional problems at age seven children’s programmes made in the public
which was consistent with a diagnosis of and private sectors, i.e. BBC and commer-
ADHD. Children who watched television cial television. The duration of a typical
at ages one and three had a significantly scene in a public children’s show lasted
increased risk of developing such atten- over 70% longer than in a commercially
tional problems by the time they were produced show. Children’s television pro-
seven. For every hour of television a child grammes increasingly demand constant
watched per day, there was a 9% increase attentional shifts by their viewers but do
in attentional problems. The authors sug- not require them to pay prolonged atten-
gest that their findings may actually be an tional shifts to given events. Researchers
understatement of the effects on children. are now asking if it is possible that televi-
Yet attention is not merely confined to sion’s conditioning of short attentional span
everyday descriptions such as concentra- may be related to some school children’s
tion or attention span. New brain-imaging attentional deficits in later classroom set-
studies are finding that different parts of tings and whether the recent increase of
the brain deal with different types of attention deficit disorders in school age
attention, and so there can be types of children might be a natural reaction to our
attentional damage different from ADHD. modern speeded-up culture – an attention
If early exposure to television does affect deficit culture. Could it be the form, not
found that computer games only stimulat- viewing and particularly passive TV expo-
ed activity in those parts of the brain sure “significantly increase the risk of sleep-
associated with vision and movement as ing difficulties” (Paavonen et al, 2006). A
compared to arithmetic-stimulated brain study at Columbia University found that
activity (Kawashima, 2001). Adding single young adolescents who watched three or
digit numbers activated areas throughout more hours of television a day ended up at
the left and right frontal lobes. Playing a significantly increased risk for frequent
computer games did not. The findings sleep problems as adults. Remember that
were described by the World Federation of this amount of screen time is actually less
Neurology as “alarming …computer games than the average. On the other hand, those
stunted the developing mind …” adolescents who reduced their television
Television viewing among children viewing from one hour or longer to less
under three years of age is found to have than one hour per day experienced a sig-
deleterious effects on mathematical ability, nificant reduction in risk for subsequent
reading recognition and comprehension in sleep problems (Johnson et al, 2004).
later childhood. Along with television view- The implications may be serious. Stanford
ing displacing educational and play activ- University Medical Center has found evi-
ities, it is suspected this harm may be due dence that a lack of sleep can significantly
to the visual and auditory output from the alter levels of the hormone melatonin, an
television actually affecting the child’s extremely powerful antioxidant. Reduced
rapidly developing brain. A 26-year study, amounts of melatonin may result in a
tracking children from birth, has recently greater chance that cell DNA will produce
concluded that television viewing in child- cancer-causing mutations (Sephton and
hood and adolescence is associated with Speigel, 2003). Melatonin is also sleep-
poor educational achievement by 26 years promoting. As it grows dark melatonin
of age (Hancox et al, 2005). Early exposure levels rise and help facilitate sleep.
to television may have long-lasting adverse Researchers have recently reported (Salti
consequences for educational achievement et al, 2006) that when children aged 6-12
and later socioeconomic status and well- were deprived of their TV sets, computers
being. The authors describe a dose-response and video games, their melatonin produc-
relationship between the amount of tele- tion increased by an average 30%.
vision watched and declining educational Exposure to a television screen was asso-
performance which has ‘biological plausi- ciated with lower urinary melatonin levels,
bility’. Significant long-term effects particularly affecting younger children at
occurred even at so-called modest levels of a pubertal stage when important changes
television viewing: between one and two in melatonin’s role take place. The lead
hours per day. author speculated that girls are reaching
puberty much earlier than in the 1950s.
Sleep One reason is due to their average
An increasing number of studies have increase in weight; but another may be
found that children are getting less sleep due to reduced levels of melatonin. Animal
than previous generations and are experi- studies have shown that low melatonin
encing more sleeping difficulties. New levels have an important role in promoting
research has found a significant relation- an early onset of puberty.
ship between exposure to television and
sleeping difficulties in different age Body fat
groups ranging from infants to adults. Research from as far apart as China and
A study by Thompson and Christakis Mexico is increasingly identifying television
(2005) of 2068 children found that television exposure as an independent factor in obe-
viewing among infants and toddlers was sity. Mexico’s health ministry has reported
associated with irregular sleep patterns. that obesity has risen by 170% in a single
The number of hours of television watched decade, with odds ratios of obesity 12%
per day was independently associated higher for each hour of television watched
with both irregular naptime schedule and per day. While in China, a study of 10,000
irregular bedtime schedules. Another people found that for each hour of televi-
study of 5-6 year olds found that both sion viewing there was a significant
active TV viewing and passive TV exposure increase in the prevalence of obesity. A
was related to shorter sleep duration, study in New Zealand following children
sleeping disorders, and overall sleep dis- from birth to age 15 recently found the
turbances. Moreover, passive exposure to amount of television viewing to be a more
TV of more than two hours per day was significant factor in obesity than the
strongly related to sleep disturbances. TV effect sizes often reported for nutritional
Medicines have often come from nature, but it is surprising how many have been developed from some of the most toxic substances known. Botox is one
example that has caught the public’s imagination but there are other recent examples of relevance to areas such as pain relief, diabetes and strokes.
Alan Harvey has a background in neuropharmacology and current interests in the use of natural products for drug discovery. Since 1988, he has
led the Strathclyde Institute for Drug Research, a collaborative centre in the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow that encourages
interactions between academic researchers and industry. SIDR has worked with 50 companies throughout the world and has
attracted more than £20 million in industrial funding. Alan Harvey is also involved in a wide variety of early-stage drug discovery
projects from natural products. Along with colleagues from phytochemistry, he has assembled a highly diverse collection of
plant extracts that is used in random screening; he coordinates the bioassay development and screening teams. This has led
to several patent applications and numerous leads that are currently being followed up in different therapeutic areas.
For more information please contact: Annaliese Shiret, Events and Conference Manager, 9 Red Lion Court, INSTITUTE
London, EC4A 3EF. Tel: 020 7936 5980. Email: a.shiret@iob.org OF BIOLOGY