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Associations among exposure to television or video, language development, and school achievement in childhood: a prospective birth cohort study

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Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Exposure to electronic media, which begins in early childhood, has been gradually increasing. This study investigated the associations between time watching television or video (TV time), children’s language development, and school achievement using a large prospective design.

Methods

The participants underwent annual assessment from birth (T1; 5.5 months) to T8 (87.9 months). We used a parental questionnaire to evaluate TV time annually from T3 (2.2 years) to T8 (7.3 years), by the item asking “How many hours does your child usually spend a day watching TV or videos?”. Children were grouped by TV time using group-based trajectory analysis. Among 2150 participants, 1087 were included in the final analysis. The Korean version of the Denver II and the Korean-Ages and Stages questionnaires were administered to evaluate early childhood development (T1 to T3). The Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test was used to assess children’s language development at T8. Questionnaires completed by both parents and teachers were used to evaluate school achievement at T8.

Results

Participants were divided into “Low Descending” (LD), “Medium Flat” (MF), “High Ascending” (HA), and “Extremely High Descending” (XHD) groups. Early language development at T1 and T2 did not significantly differ among all groups. However, language development at T3 and T8, and school achievement at T8 differed significantly, and were the highest in LD and lowest in HA.

Conclusion

We found a negative association between greater TV time and children’s language and cognitive development. Thus, unchecked TV exposure could be detrimental to childhood cognitive development.

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Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Abbreviations

T1:

Time 1

T2:

Time 2

T3:

Time 3

T4:

Time 4

T5:

Time 5

T6:

Time 6

T7:

Time 7

T8:

Time 8

LD:

Low descending

MF:

Medium flat

HA:

High ascending

XHD:

Extremely high descending

REVT:

Receptive and expressive vocabulary test

K-ASQ:

Korean-ages and stage questionnaires

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education, which provided the raw data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Dankook University, Cheonan, Republic of Korea

    Kyoung Min Kim

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Kyungpook National University Children’s Hospital, 807 Hoguk-ro, Buk-gu, Deagu, 41404, Republic of Korea

    Un Sun Chung

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  1. Kyoung Min Kim
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Contributions

Prof. Kim and Prof. Chung conceptualized and designed the study, drafted the initial manuscript, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript as submitted and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Un Sun Chung.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

Ethics approval

This study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments, and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Korean Institute of Child Care of Education.

Consent to participate

We provided the parents of participating children with information on the purpose and procedure of the study, and all gave their written informed consent before participating.

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Kim, K.M., Chung, U.S. Associations among exposure to television or video, language development, and school achievement in childhood: a prospective birth cohort study. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 56, 847–856 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-020-01967-w

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