Recent data from Extreamist showed children between 2-18 years old stream about 1.8 hours of content from Netflix, Hulu, Your Tube, or other online services each day. This adds up to 650 hours per year. On the other hand, data from the National Wild Life Federations suggests children spend an average of 4-7 minutes playing outdoors each day. That only adds up to 24 to 43 hours per year. In other words, the amount of time children spend streaming and watching shows is 15 to 27 times greater than the time they spend in unstructured outdoor play. (Read Kids Watch Services Like Netflix 15 Times as Much as They Play Outdoors for more on these statistics.) They spend more time watching cops and robbers on a screen than they spend playing cops and robbers…more time watching fantasy stories created and filmed by others than they spend creating their own imaginative stories. The unstructured, imaginative play they miss out on by watching streaming videos is the very activity that helps fuel their emotional maturity and makes them “a head taller than themselves” in self-control and emotional management (See Make Your Child “a Head Taller Than Himself” for more.)

Another study, led by a professor at the University of Montreal, reveals a few more specifics about the impact of watching TV, especially for toddlers (Couch Potato: Chilling In Front of the TV as a Toddler Can Lead to Being Bullied Later in Life.) This study examined the connection between time spent watching TV as a 29-month-old toddler and the same child’s social experience as a 13-year-old. The results suggest that every 53 minutes of daily toddler TV exposure increased the risk of peer victimization, social isolation, or aggression in that same child at 13 years of age. In other words, the more a toddler watched TV, the greater the risk of poor social interactions as a 13-year-old.

Overall, the more time children spend watching TV, the less time they spend engaging in the creative imaginative, and interactive play that is so crucial to healthy development. Maybe we, as parents, need to ask ourselves some difficult questions:

• Do we want our children’s minds, imaginations, and emotions shaped by half-hour sitcoms and frenetic cartoons or by the interactive, imaginative play engaged in with others?
• Do we want our children’s intellect and thought life stimulated by the subtle innuendos of shows streamed into the home or by the undivided responsive interaction of friends and family?
• Do we want our children’s values to mimic those learned on the internet (where someone can be thrown across the room and stand up unharmed) or those learned from interactions with “real-live” people with real emotions and real consequences?

I’m not suggesting our children never watch TV or stream shows. However, our children will benefit greatly when we learn to limit the streaming and encourage their creative, imaginative interactions with other people.