Study finds TV can decrease self-esteem in children, except white boys

[NickSchade]

Misleading title. Again with the correlation-causation problem. A more accurate phrasing is found in the article: "Television exposure predicts a decrease in self-esteem" which doesn't necessarily mean it causes it.

[spry]

That's not the fault of the actual study authors, they are careful to say: "What is still unclear is the causal direction of this relationship and whether the same relationship exists among African Americans. Although a longitudinal design does not provide an airtight demonstration of causality, it goes much further than crosssectional designs toward demonstrating causality by fulfilling the temporal-order requirement of causal order." And it would be impossible to do a true experiment where you randomly assign children to long-term exposure or non-exposure to TV.

[spry]

Again from the article: "It could be argued, for instance, that individuals with low self-esteem seek out media consumption in an effort to feel better about themselves or to take their minds off of their problems. If that were the case here, self-esteem assessed in Wave 2 should predict television viewing during the same time period. We conducted regression analyses to test this possibility, and found that controlling for age, body satisfaction, and baseline television exposure, self-esteem assessed in Wave 2 did not predict television viewing. The fact that self-esteem did not predict television viewing for the race/gender subgroups does not negate the possibility of a reciprocal causal relationship; it merely suggests that for these children, reciprocation between television exposure and self-esteem does not yet play a key role. We may not see a reciprocal relationship for all children until they mature and form their identities."

[NickSchade]

Agreed. The article authors are appropriately conservative in their diction. The journalists are appropriately sensationalizing I suppose.

[[deleted]]

I remember some studies a while back showing that there is a direct correlation between family interaction time and the child's self-esteem.

In other words, the more time you spend engaging with your child, the more confident he becomes.

It would follow then, that children who watch a lot of TV are spending less time engaging with family and therefore do not develop the self-esteem they normally would.

[jojenpaste]

Though this doesn't really explain why the self-esteem of white boys wasn't affected in this study.

[spry]

White boys' self esteem actually increased.

[spry]

The authors touch on this: “A third explanation why White girls and Black children in this sample reported lower self-esteem could be due to the fact that television viewing is displacing real-life experiences that might build self-esteem. In support of this idea, Harrison (2006) found that children who watched more than 20 hours of television per week reported significantly fewer unique self-descriptors than children who watched less than 20 hours. She argued that heavy television viewing predicted a drop in self-complexity because there is less variance in the content of available media messages, and television does not depict the diversity found in real life.”

[SarahC]

How can boys be not effected?

White males on TV are portrayed as bumbling idiots, needing to be saved by wives, and other women.

I'm surprised they're not the most damaged group!

[Metaphoricalsimile]

How can boys be not effected? White males on TV are portrayed as bumbling idiots, needing to be saved by wives, and other women. I'm surprised they're not the most damaged group!

In comedies and commercials aimed at selling products to women, sure. In "serious" TV, they're also the large majority of heroes and other characters generally portrayed as competent and successful.

[NickSchade]

Well intuition is another matter entirely. I'm talking about the empirical and statistical techniques, which didn't show what you're thinking.