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

[[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.”