No naughty movies or TV for AP students

Like Mom says: No TV on school nights
Study links viewing to classroom struggle

By Carla K. Johnson
Associated Press

October 2, 2006

Middle school pupils who watch TV or play video games during the week do worse in school, a new study finds, but weekend viewing and gaming doesn't affect school performance much.

"On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," said study co-author Dr. Iman Sharif of Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City. "They could watch a lot on weekends, and it didn't seem to correlate with doing worse."

Children whose parents allowed them to watch R-rated movies also did worse in class. That effect was especially strong for boys.

The findings, based on a survey of 4,500 pupils in 15 New Hampshire and Vermont middle schools, appear in the October issue of Pediatrics.

Weekend viewing and gaming slightly hurt school performance, but only when the children spent more than four hours each day at it over the weekend.

The study didn't look at grades or test scores, relying instead on students' own rating of their performance from "excellent" to "below average." Sharif said other studies have shown that students generally inflate their actual school performance when asked. But because both good and bad students overrate their performance, she said, self-reporting is reliable.

Researchers took into account the possible effect of different parenting styles as reported by the pupils, and they still found weekday TV viewing, video games and R-rated movie-watching harmful.

The researchers didn't speculate on why boys might be more affected by R-rated movies than girls. But Douglas Gentile, who does similar research at Iowa State University, said boys may be watching more violent R-rated movies that make them more aggressive. The aggression may lead to poor school performance, said Gentile, who was not involved in the study.