We don’t have a TV, and my 2 year old has rarely watched one. We occasionally stream movies (really, only Ratatouille, as that’s the only movie she’ll watch). She loses interest after the first 20 minutes.
She is, however, NUTS for the iPad. We have to limit that to two short 5-10 minute sessions a day (once in the morning and once after bath in the evening). If I let her, she’d play with that for hours. On it, she watches mostly PBS cartoons/sesame street and does apps.
First, American Academy of Pediatrics’s policy statement:
(Short statement, worth reading in entirety).
Second, we’re a bit Luddite, in the sense that we don’t own a television. But then we watch a lot on Hulu and Youtube, so it’s not entirely accurate to call us Luddite.
Watching television is a family affair for us for the most part: when our 4-year-old watches something on her own, we’re total snots about what it can be (Miyazaki or Pixar or Aardman=yes; nature documentaries=of course; anything else=no). We limit the time, and include game-time with me (where she sits on my lap and tells me what to do in Minecraft, and occasionally mines the diamonds or shears the sheep herself). More than an hour a day is really rare, like gone-on-vacation rare, and generally we’re talking about 20-30 minutes.
That time is replaced with incessant read-alouds and jigsaw puzzles and random stream-of-consciousness conversations with er, and after she’s watched something we talk about it a lot and it generally gets incorporated into her surreal pretend world.
As she gets older, I can see that changing slightly, and maybe when she’s in middle school she might get a computer she can take to her room, but even then I imagine keeping pretty tight controls over it. I get a lot of parenting tips from my students’ parents, both negative and positive, and I pretty much never see a kid with unrestrained access to screentime who is developing socially or mentally the way I want my kids to develop.
My son has always had a TV in his bedroom. He also had a VCR (we’re old) and various game consoles. There was never an issue - really. He didn’t ALWAYS watch TV or play video games, he read, he’d play games with friends, it just was never an issue.
Nodding to all of this. I feel TV in bedrooms is a good way cure anyone of that nasty reading habit.
Pretty much this. Our kids are 6 and 9. My 9-year-old has mentioned a few times that he would like a TV in his bedroom. My response is, “When you move out you can have a TV in your bedroom, but not while you’re living in this house.”
No, no, a thousand times no! This is one of those issues I feel (perhaps justifiably) very snobbish about.
We have one television in the house and it’s in the living room. It’s probably on for a total of 4 hours per day; a couple hours of kids’ programming sprinkled throughout the day, and a couple hours of adult TV after the kids have gone to sleep.
We may get a second television in the future for video games/etc as our boys (currently 4 and 2) get older, but it would be in the spare room and not in either bedroom. Same goes for computers, no computers in bedrooms either.
Who the heck gives a one-year old a TV? That just seems weird.
My kids are 7 and 3.5. I have absolutely no plans to put a TV in either of their rooms ever. They get so easily hypnotized by TV as it is. Plus, I’d rather they spend time playing outside than sitting in a room watching TV.
I don’t see any harm in a little one watching TV, but a TV in their room is too much access, especially once they get old enough to figure out how to work it themselves.
Eldest never had a TV in her bedroom. The younger one had one in high school, but only because her grandfather, who was staying longer than expected, monopolized the TV in the living room watching 'Are you Being Served?"
She is gone now and that small TV hasn’t been turned on for years.
We don’t have one in our bedroom, since bedrooms should be reserved for bedroom activities.
Reading, of course!
I have kids that are 11 and 5 and there is not a TV in either room. The 11 year old did ask for one once, but isn’t going to get one. We currently have one in our basement entertainment area, one in the parents room, and one in our office/spare bedroom that doesn’t really get used much plus we have Netflix available on laptops or tablets so they have plenty of options without needing a TV in their room.
When I was growing up, I bought a small black and white TV (remember those things? It was $20 cheaper than the color equivalent) with my confirmation money that I kept in our “spare bedroom”/common area on our second floor. I initially used it as a computer monitor but then eventually got a monitor and used the TV for TV. I never had it in my room.
Shouldn’t this be posted in the Pit? 
I don’t even have a TV in MY bedroom, and I live alone. I don’t think kids should have a TV or a computer in their rooms until they’re at least old enough to buy it themselves, and maybe not even then, depending on the child. My nieces, who are 12 and 13, have computers in their rooms, something I don’t agree with but I’m not the person who makes those decisions.
No. I decline to open Pit threads as a matter of policy.
I know things are always pretty different in institutions, but I have seen the effects of children raised with nothing but the tv on all the time. Bad news.
Our rule was 1 hour of supervised tv time after supper, before bed. We all agreed which telenovela we were going to watch, and would stick to that one for as long as it ran. And on the weekends we hooked up the projector to watch a film. With popcorn, and soft drinks and home made theatre tickets. 
The cool thing was how special it was.
No way, no how. We have one TV in our house, and that’s the way it’ll stay.
I’m gonna rant a little bit, if you don’t mind.
I mean, my daughter turns one tomorrow, and I couldn’t fucking conceive of her having a TV of her own in her room. I’d almost consider doing that to a one year old to be child abuse. She doesn’t get to watch TV at all. She’s ONE!
Her 8yo sister gets half an hour a week day, max (which she doesn’t take every day). More on weekends, because I don’t see the harm in lazing in your PJs watching cartoons when you’re 8 - we watch Adventure Time together, it’s fun. But she’s never getting a TV in her room either, unless she buys it for herself..
We have 2 kids 13 and not-quite 16.
There is one TV in the house, which lives in t the basement, with an Xbox. We have no cable. We use netflix or itunes or download via some other fashion, or use Dvds. We’re not Luddites, we have multiple computers and 2 iphones in the house, but the main floor and the bedrooms are only amenable to either a laptop or an phone, and no TV. Dinner is quieter, we eat as a family, and the bedrooms are more peaceful.
Actually, thinking about it more, I want to emphasise how special this time was. Tv time after supper was snuggle time, and play those lazy games time. The kids were all washed and fed. All 500 teeth brushed. All scrapes with plasters, all medicines dutifully swallowed. Homework done.
We made a rule, secretly, the kids didn’t know. The rule was that any kid under the age of 12 has the absolute right to be carried to bed if they fall asleep. Remember being carried to bed, remember what that felt like? Tucked in, kissed on the forehead, cared for so much. That should be a universal right. Every child has the right to feel that. That’s what we made that rule for.
And that’s what tv time should be: family time, relaxing, but also special. If you just watch tv all the time, or the tv is in your room, how can it be special?
I don’t understand the difference as far as laptops vs. TVs being in bedrooms. I don’t even remember the last time I turned on the TV in my room because it’s been many months, but I usually watch Netflix or Hulu on my laptop a couple/few times a week. I dropped cable TV two years ago and it made almost no difference to me or to my daughter.
My wife & I don’t bring laptops into the bedroom (at least I don’t, and she doesn’t if I’m there) because we have a comfy home office, which is where we work. The bedroom is for sleeping, cuddling, sex, getting dressed and undressed, playing with the baby, and of course swordfights.
I wasn’t allowed to watch tv growing up, except for Nova and Jacques Cousteau specials. Later, I wasn’t allowed to watch sitcoms, which, it being the seventies, I can’t really argue with that state of affairs. When I came home after my first year away at college - I caught my parents watching Happy Days!!! I was so pissed off.
If I had a kid, I wouldn’t own a tv and I would limit my computer screen time to necessities, at least until the kid was six, based on what I’ve read about brain development and learning to process 2d/3d images. The AAP linked above says this:
and I would run with that.
Not that I would consider myself any sort of role model for parenting advice. I don’t have a kid, and on balance, that was the right choice for me. But I think you’re doing the right thing, Skald.
I don’t even want one in the house, and it’s mostly because I don’t want my eight year old watching it. I had a tv at one time, just the standard broadcast channels, and I only let her watch PBS and Qbo. Qbo is what turned me off television because of the commercials. She does not need to see ads for belly fat loss pills and every product “NOT SOLD IN STORES”.
I do let her watch shows online. Even Family Guy. Just no commercials. One hour a day most days. Sometimes more if there’s something we want to see together. We just started watching an episode of Futurama every night before bed and that’s a fun little bit of togetherness.
You can possibly avoid your daughter becoming hooked on electronics, but you have to be the good example that leads her.
Yeah, that’s why I get the “no-electronics-in-bedrooms-at-all” thing, for people with enough living space to make that comfortable (which does not include me), but I don’t get the ban on TVs only. So many of the No TV (either in bedrooms or at all) people are fine with Netflix and stuff. What’s the difference? I guess by some standards I could consider myself a No TV person, but I’m really not. I watch TV when I feel like it, which isn’t that often really…but I do a lot of other things that are no more productive, so who cares?
Anyway, like I said, I think it all completely depends on an individual’s circumstances. Some people are very prone to holing themselves up in their room and watching way too much TV. Others aren’t, and just like laying in bed for the few hours a week when they watch TV, etc. My daughter isn’t prone to watching much TV at all, and I don’t ban her from bringing her laptop in her room, but if she has it in there much I tell her to use it in the living room, and too much more than THAT, I start telling her to get off the computer and go see some friends or clean the kitchen or something.
People and families are different, there’s no blanket answer.