To be perfectly honest this is something I never worried about when my kids were younger. Maybe because I was a single parent and for many years my kids didn't have a T.V. in their rooms. We had a T.V. downstairs in the family room and a T.V. in the living room. Which forced us to watch T.V. together most of the time.
Now new research from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom has found that 5 year olds who watch up to 3 hours of T.V. daily have better communication skills by the time they're 11. Kids who watch less than 3 hours a day are actually less able to communicate by the time they're 11. So what's the reason?
Well, it's actually how kids watch T.V. that matters. Kids who watch T.V. with their parents or siblings and talk while they're watching have the improved communication skills. That makes perfect sense.
What we could take away from this new report is that watching T.V. isn't as bad for kids as we once believed. However, it's still not good to park your child in front of the T.V. like an electronic babysitter.