In your monthly reminder that you should probably just hand your children over to be raised by doctors before you completely ruin them, a new study suggests that parents who use TV to calm their fussy children are only making them fussier. To reach the scientific conclusion that you’re doing it wrong again, a group of researchers based at the Boston Medical Center, a city at the forefront of tantrums, looked at 7,400 children born in 2001. They first tracked the kids’ abilities to pay attention, calm themselves, sleep, and other self-regulating behaviors at the age of 9 months, then again at the age of 2, after they were first exposed to media. Toddlers who were deemed the “fussiest” were found to have spent more time watching TV—an average of nine extra minutes per day, or approximately 18 of those Microsoft “Honestly” ads. Parents of those toddlers were found to have enjoyed those nine extra minutes immensely.
In the report soon to be published in the Journal Of So What, researchers also found that bright, flashing colors and jarring sounds are not actually soothing over-stimulated children, only quieting them by overwhelming them into submission. And while this may be doing wonders for parents’ coping strategies, doctors argue this could be preventing toddlers from developing their own coping strategies, at least until they’re old enough to learn to emulate them from TV characters like the rest of us.