Once Again, TV Does Not Cause Autism
July 30, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
No.
TV does not cause autism. Reports of a study about this theory were everywhere in the fall of 2006, after the study’s authors posted their (then yet unpublished paper) on their website. Since then, the study’s been referred to as “just plain stupid” and has been more recently cited here. And it’s also been noted that the “TV causes autism” study implicitly blames parents who just let the TV do the parenting, or at least some babysitting.
If by chance any of you drop into my living room/Jim’s work space/Charlie’s space, and if you have the TV-autism theory in mind, you need fear not. We don’t have a TV. In fact, we don’t have a VCR and Charlie, the boy who is being taught to play Nintendo (don’t worry, I am saying no to Grand Auto Theft), barely watched it when we did, and that was the case with Charlie as a (yet undiagnosed) toddler, unless a few choice Barney/Teletubbies/Wiggles shows came on.
On to the next theory of autism aetiology……..
then yet unpublished paper
And STILL unpublished, with nary an “in press” or “running head” to be seen.
Outlets really need to chill and call back when and if this (ever) makes it through peer review or is even intended to go further than direct-to-public, because then it would be news…or at least new news.
Seems like once something gets onto the net it keeps coming back to life like Michael Myers.
“On to the next theory of autism aetiology……..”
George Foreman grills?
Scooters?
Lugubrious pelicans?
Thank you for sharing this. I find it amazing that people believe this and have even had some people comment on M watching television. Ugh. Ridiculous.
We love television and film and do watch it in our home. As far as having t.v. babysit our child? I have yet to meet anyone where that works. A t.v. babysitting a child. Hmmm…it is an interesting idea but a t.v. can’t really be a babysitter. You think people would know it is a lifeless object.;)
I wonder with articles relating how autism is from TV exposure how my little guy –who hates TV–’caught’ it. LOL
A relative of mine tried to imply that when my granddaughter was a baby, toddler -and now at age 4 1/2 she was being affected by the tv that plays virtually day and night in our house -when it became known she had develomental delays, he tried to push that envelope again. However, she always loved the music, the commercials, various programs and once her vocabulary began to develop and she was learning numbers, counting, around age 30 months, it was from watching Sesame Street that she taught herself to count beyond 10 and up to over 100, then counting backwards too! The Tv -again, Sesame Street, also reinforced her learning the alphabet, various sou8nds and even a few Spanish words from watching Dora the Explorer. One of her early favorite evening tv shows was “Deal or No Deal” and she would run when she heard the theme song playing, stand in front of the set and call out to contestants -appropriately too -”DEAL”! If anything, I think the tv was quite beneficial to her as it reinforced many of the things she was also learning in her therapy sessions at the time.
I’m gonna quote Michael Savage, here; “Any disease is mostly caused by 1/3 genetics, 1/3 environment, and 1/3 who knows what.”
Not that autism is a disease, but I do believe that staring at the TV with mouth open is not a good environment for anybody, child or grownup, autie or NT.
The last time I got to watch TV, it was cable, and all I watched was C-SPAN (loved Book Notes!) Ben Stein’s Money (always won) and South Park.
I remember from back in the fifties when I was a kid, that there were some attempts to put serious drama on TV. Later it became much more of a mass opiate
Well, I kind of stopped watching TV regularly when I was in the 8th grade. Still can’t quite get myself to watch too much Youtube!
I’m listening to Phil Hendrie right now, and he’s talking about the upcoming Olympics, and how the Communist government of China is really good at business. It really is a police state over there, no matter how much money they are making. I do believe they’ve lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Effin’ Commies!
Where is Sun Yat-Sen, now that we really need him?
BTW, did you know that Madame Chiang Kai-Shek attended Weslyan College in GA, just like my cousin Jane. I believe she may have spoken English like a Georgia person.
Just weird, no significance
Well, that was silly, talking about Chinese politics. I should be more concerned with politics in this county where I live, first, then Florida politics, then autistic politics, then national politics, and a long lagging last, the politics of other countries.
Cain’t help m’self. I just go “ooh, shiny!” and write about the first thing which comes to mind.
Sorry.
Funny that you mention Grand Theft Auto, because PJ adores it. I already beat the game so in theory there’s nothing to do but run around and do mischief, but he loves to fly the helicopters around and doing stunt jumps in motorcycles.
Whenever Nico (the main character) falls off the bike (mostly because PJ made him do it on purpose) he asks “are you OK? are you alright?” then figures out a new way of making him crash. With the helicopters sometimes he makes him jump off the helicopter into the water so he can make swim Nico around. He used to do the same thing in an older game called Crackdown because the characters can jump and climb any building in the game. In that case he would spend dead hours exploring the in-game city.
Our dd showed signs of autism very early in life, long before she realized tv might be any fun. Around two, she started watching some tv and now, at 3.5, she has a few shows she really enjoys, but if anything, they help her as they passively teach emotions, social skills, jokes, etc. She has a harder time with one on one teaching or even sitting in a group with a teacher because the environment is too much for her to be able to focus on the content. We’ve found that TV has helped act as a teacher (gasp!) and we’ve appreciated it’s influence. It was far from what caused or created any autistic characteristics in her as those showed up long before she even noticed a television.
While I’m not a fan of tv in general, especially for infants, I’m pretty sure it did not cause my son’s (or anyone else’s) autism. It all goes back to the invisible autistic adults doesn’t it? If you believe they don’t exist then you would look for a (relatively) recent cause and tv sounds good I guess because, really, it’s not that good for any child.
“On to the next theory of autism aetiology……..”
Breath mints?
Oh, I need to get some more fluoridated water for the kids and schedule their next round of vaccinations! ;0)
We didn’t even have TV for the first few years of my life. Didn’t have a computer either. I do remember having one when I was 5 or so, must have been the first one that my dad got from his employer. I played hangman on it but I didn’t know I was supposed to guess a word before the man was completed. I thought I had to make the man appear. I never figured out the mechanism to do that, even, either, so I just bashed keys at random and was happy when I ’succeeded’.
My mom didn’t have any TV when she was little until sometime in puberty.
Oh yeah, I forgot to turn on the TV for the kids, too…
“On to the next theory of autism aetiology……..”
Oxygen?