Report: Kids In Daycare Watch Too Much TV

A new study announced this week find that children in daycare are spending as much as two hours a day watching TV. When added to the two to three hours many parents already admit to allowing at home, preschoolers in a daycare could be spending more than 1/3 of their day in front of the television.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle and one of the study’s author’s said that amount of time is double the TV time he found in a previous study based on parental reports of home viewing.  He went onto say that he thought television use was probably underreported — so the actual time spent watching TV is actually higher. Of the child care programs surveyed, 70 percent of home-based child cares and 36 percent of centers said children watch TV daily.

“It’s not what parents have signed up for,” Christakis said. “I’m not sure how many parents are aware of this.”

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