...is bad for children.

There was one of those Sunday morning debates on TV today that I tend to watch with half an eye, listen to with half an ear and process with half a brain. That's pertinent because the debate was about whether or not watching TV is bad for children. It's such a common debate that it's hard not to have to suppress a yawn.

I thought that the claim that British infants watch an average of six hours a day was unlikely but for the purpose of the point I want to make I'll accept it at face value. What struck me though was that some of the comments made mirrored almost exactly things I have heard before in other circumstances.

For example:

Watching so much TV, and using computers,  is bad for children's eyes.

Watching TV, and using computers,  is a solitary activity that deprives children of the interaction necessary to learn social skills.

Watching TV, and using computers,  is a sedentary activity that prevents children getting the amount of exercise that they need.

Watching TV, and using computers, is bad for children's emotional development as they never make any real friends.

And the circumstances in which I have heard them before?

About me when I was a solitary child who much preferred sitting reading a book to being out in the street playing football. They are exactly the kind of comments that my parents used to use to try to badger me into leaving the happy nest of my library-like room and go out into the big bad world to play with a lot of kids who liked me about as much as I liked them. Substitute "reading all the time" at the start of each sentence and you have the comments pretty accurately quoted.

I'm betting that at every point in history there has been someone saying that something is stunting kids physical and emotional development and I'm also betting that it's as wrong now as it's ever been.