The effect of watching television on language development for children under the age of four

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the age of onset of television watching and the average daily television watching durations in healthy children who were diagnosed with language developmental deficits in the age range 18-48 months and healthy children who were not identified with language developmental delay. Material and Methods: Pediatry Department aged 18-48 month who are identified language developmental retardation by Denver II development screening test are selected. As a control group 46 children in the same age group with no developmental delay by Denver II are selected. The data were collected using a face-to-face interview technique. In the collection of the data, the researcher used the two-part data collection form prepared according to the related literature. Results: There were no significant differences between the groups with language development retardation and control group in terms of age, weight, height, head circumference, birth weight, the two groups were found eligible to examine. There was no significant difference between the group with the language development retardation and the control group in terms of the duration of breastfeeding, maternal and paternal education levels, monthly income levels of the families. There was a significant difference in the duration of daily television watching between the language development retardation and the control group. A significant difference was also found between the age of onset of television watching and the control group. Conclusion: Our study showed that children with language developmental delays had a higher rate of watching television before 1 year of age and watching more than 3 hours a day. In the light of our study, we think that it is necessary to inform that the age of starting to watch television should be as late as possible and at least 1 year old and the daily monitoring time should be kept under 3 hours.