This article was originally published in April 2018.
A new LCC Working Paper by Dr Michael Kühhirt and Dr Markus Klein explores social stratification in TV consumption during early childhood and its consequences for children’s cognitive and behavioural development.
The paper answers three important questions:
- Are there differences in the growth of children’s weekly television consumption from age two to age four depending on their parents’ education?
- Is early television consumption associated with differences in vocabulary, reasoning ability, and behavioural problems at age 5?
- Does this association differ by parents’ education?
The authors find that, although television consumption was higher for children of parents with lower education, there were no associations of television consumption with cognitive and language development and only very small ones with conduct problems and prosocial behaviour. These associations with behaviour were slightly larger for children whose parents attained lower secondary education or less.
Overall, the authors argue that the impact of TV consumption on children’s development is less pronounced than often assumed and may not play a major role in explaining socio-economic differences in children’s academic achievement and educational attainment.
You can find their paper here.