Studying precisely how much time children spend in front of the TV set is very difficult, especially in societies where parents don't get to spend as much time with their juniors as both of the parties would want to. This type of settings offers the perfect conditions for excesses to occur, and watching TV is one of them. This was proven recently, when the first survey on how much TV children had watched in daycare settings in the past 20 years was conducted. The researchers found that the little ones in fact watched much more shows and cartoons than any existing statistics had predicted.

“It's alarming to find that so many children in the United States are watching essentially twice as much television as we previously thought. Research continues to link excessive preschool screen time with language delay, obesity, attentional problems and even aggression depending upon content. At the same time, studies show that high quality preschool can be beneficial to children's development,” the lead researcher of the new study, Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, explains, quoted by PhysOrg.

“Unfortunately, for many children, the potential benefits of preschool may be displaced by passive TV viewing. I suspect many parents are unaware of the frequency and extent of TV viewing in day care settings. Hopefully, these findings will serve as a wake up call for them,” he adds. Christakis is also the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the Seattle Children's Research Institute, as well as a professor of pediatrics at the Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM).

The new investigation is detailed in a paper called “Preschool-Aged Children's Television Viewing in Child Care Settings” and will appear in print in the December 2009 issue of the respected scientific journal Pediatrics. The paper was already made available online on November 23, 2009. The research determined that children – who were believed to be watching as much as two to three hours of TV per day – in fact watched two times that, especially in daycare settings. The scientists also mentioned that the last available figures on daycare were at least 20 years old, and therefore bore little significance for the society at the moment.