No TV for Toddlers? Why Restrictions Are Necessary

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Is "must-see" TV a must-not for your toddler? Find out why experts advise parents to restrict TV for toddlers.

In 1999, two years after the world met Baby Einstein and the Teletubbies, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a recommendation: no TV for kids under two. Parents often consider this suggestion from a group of approximately 60,000 pediatricians and pediatric specialists as they decide at what point to let their children watch television. But how did the AAP decide on this guideline, and why did it pick the age of two?

Behind the Scenes

"I know the machinations of how that recommendation occurred," shares Dr. Donald Shifrin, MD, chair of the AAP's Committee on Communications and a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The AAP began thinking about the issue of TV for children under two when Teletubbies appeared on public television in the late 1990s, he explains.

"The two-year-old market went bananas for it," says Dr. Shifrin. As opposed to Barney, a program that focused on children who could talk, and Sesame Street, which targeted preschoolers, Teletubbies was "a preverbal program—the Teletubbies barely spoke. They drifted across this kaleidoscopic landscape of color," says Dr. Shifrin.

The program was wildly successful, selling millions of dollars' worth of merchandise, and other television producers couldn't help taking note. Given this economic success, the members of the AAP's Committee on Public Education thought, "If this is the future of TV, that kids under two are now going to be demographic targets for programming, then we would issue a caveat," says Dr. Shifrin, who was a member of that committee which wrote the 1999 guideline.