EARLY INITIATION OF TELEVISION VIEWING: DOES IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN DEVELOPMENTAL FUNCTIONING?

OBJECTIVE: To examine the impact of television (TV) exposure and the home environment on developmental functioning in young children. METHODOLOGY: A total of 230 school-going children (5-9 yrs) studying in a private school in a north Indian city were recruited. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to assess the number of screens that children had access to, content viewed on TV, daily TV consumption, co-viewing habits, parents' perceptions about the negative and positive effects of TV use. The Mohite home environment inventory assessed the quality of the home environment. The main outcome measure was the child's overall developmental functioning which was measured by the Developmental Prole 3 (DP 3). RESULTS: The majority (77%) of the children watched TV for 1-2 h/day and the prevalence of TV ≥2 h/day was 20%. A little more than one-fth of the parents (21.9%) reported that their child had regularly started to view the TV screen by age 2. Signicant differences were found between the early initiation of TV (24months) group of children and the later initiated group (>24months) on the DP 3 sub-domains and the general developmental quotient (GDQ) (t=2.64, P=.009). Multivariate regression analysis indicated that the number of children in the family, socio-economic status, age at initiation of TV viewing, and home environment explained 14.3% of the variance in the GDQ score (F=10.46, P=.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Early initiation of digital media is associated with poorer developmental outcomes. Pediatricians have a critical role in providing anticipatory guidance to parents regarding inculcating healthy digital screen viewing habits.

TV medical dramas: health sciences students’ viewing habits and potential for teaching issues related to bioethics and professionalism

Background Medical dramas have been popular since their inception, especially among medical students. We hypothesized that the recent increase in the availability of TV medical series through online streaming platforms has probably changed health science students’ viewing habits as well as the representation of bioethical conflicts and health professionals. Methods We invited undergraduate students of medicine, nursing, and human biology to complete a self-administered questionnaire about their viewing habits and perceptions of the depictions of bioethical issues and professionalism in TV medical series. Results Of the 355 respondents, 98.6 % had watched TV in the last year, 93.5 % watched TV series, and 49.6 % watched medical dramas more than once a week. The most-viewed medical dramas were The Good Doctor, House MD, and Grey’s Anatomy. The most-remembered bioethical topics were medical errors, inappropriate professional behaviors, and death. Most students considered that ideals of professionalism were depicted positively and professionals were portrayed as intelligent, professionally qualified, and competent. Conclusions Medical dramas are very popular with health science students and are potentially useful as teaching tools for discussing issues related to bioethics and professionalism.

Assessment of preschool children's sleep habits in relation to the time spent watching television

Aims To assess preschool children's sleep habits and television viewing habits, parents' perceptions about TV viewing and any correlation between the two. Methods The study was conducted between March and June 2018 in randomly selected kindergartens of a large city in Greece. A total of 100 pre-school children and their parents participated in the study. Two questionnaires, the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ) and the Children's Television-Viewing Habits Questionnaire (CTVQ), were validated in Greek and used for this study. Results Children's age (P=0.001), parents' educational level (P<0.001) and number of siblings (P<0.001) were found to significantly affect the time children spent watching TV daily. Fathers' age (P=0.004), number of siblings (P=0.001) and time children spent watching TV daily (P=0.007) were negatively correlated with CSHQ score. Conclusions Pre-school aged children spend a large amount of time watching TV, which results in altered sleep patterns, despite parents encouraging them to participate in other activities. Healthcare professionals should provide parents, teachers and children with evidence-based information and advice in order to lower the incidence of sleep disorders resulting from excessive time spent watching TV.