Is Video Watching Bad for Kids? The Effect of Video Watching on Children's Skills (nber.org)
(Monday November 17, 2025 @05:40PM (msmash)
from the closer-look dept.)
- Reference: 0180109171
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/17/1810213/is-video-watching-bad-for-kids-the-effect-of-video-watching-on-childrens-skills
- Source link: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34466
Abstract of [1]a paper on NBER:
> This paper documents video consumption among school-aged children in the U.S. and explores its impact on human capital development. Video watching is common across all segments of society, yet surprisingly little is known about its developmental consequences. With a bunching identification strategy, we find that an additional hour of daily video consumption has a negative impact on children's noncognitive skills, with harmful effects on both internalizing behaviors (e.g., depression) and externalizing behaviors (e.g., social difficulties). We find a positive effect on math skills, though the effect on an aggregate measure of cognitive skills is smaller and not statistically significant. These findings are robust and largely stable across most demographics and different ways of measuring skills and video watching. We find evidence that for Hispanic children, video watching has positive effects on both cognitive and noncognitive skills -- potentially reflecting its role in supporting cultural assimilation. Interestingly, the marginal effects of video watching remain relatively stable regardless of how much time children spend on the activity, with similar incremental impacts observed among those who watch very little and those who watch for many hours.
[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w34466
> This paper documents video consumption among school-aged children in the U.S. and explores its impact on human capital development. Video watching is common across all segments of society, yet surprisingly little is known about its developmental consequences. With a bunching identification strategy, we find that an additional hour of daily video consumption has a negative impact on children's noncognitive skills, with harmful effects on both internalizing behaviors (e.g., depression) and externalizing behaviors (e.g., social difficulties). We find a positive effect on math skills, though the effect on an aggregate measure of cognitive skills is smaller and not statistically significant. These findings are robust and largely stable across most demographics and different ways of measuring skills and video watching. We find evidence that for Hispanic children, video watching has positive effects on both cognitive and noncognitive skills -- potentially reflecting its role in supporting cultural assimilation. Interestingly, the marginal effects of video watching remain relatively stable regardless of how much time children spend on the activity, with similar incremental impacts observed among those who watch very little and those who watch for many hours.
[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w34466
Stop thinking of the children! (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward
The effect of videos is much worse on middle age adults than it is on the kids.
It depends (Score:2)
by SuperDre ( 982372 )
It depends what they watch, but I see my little nephew (10 years) watch a lot of youtube, but only shorts, and that's a problem as he doesn't have the attention to watch anything longer as 20 minutes. So by only letting them always watch shorts, you create a problem. I was raised with watching TV, half hour and hour long shows, but also longer movies.
At the bottom of the Cliff's Notes and digging. (Score:2)
My own unsupported hypothesis is that watching video probably has little impact on learning in and of itself, but that it tends to lower literacy when time that would otherwise be spent reading is spent watching video. And that the easy availability of a video version of the reading matter makes reading far less likely in general, because "Why read a book when you can watch a movie?"
My completely unscientific, anecdotal observation is that kids today are hooked on the YouTube and can't read for shit. And
Re: (Score:2)
Reading a book is very "last decade". Now you just ask AI (mass-guessing algorithm) to summarize the book for you. Then you create a 10 minute YouTube/10 second tiktok video about it to hopefully become the next big influencer... (shrill and pointless!)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll meet your anecdotal evidence with my anecdotal evidence. My mom taught me to read very young and I took up the hobby for life. Knowing and enjoying reading made the educational process much easier.
With that said, I played a shitload of video games and watched a lot of television but I also road my bicycle everywhere from the age I could ride a bicycle. Minus being able to ride a bicycle safely where I live, I imagine kids are still playing a lot of video games and now watching tiktok as opposed to tele
Re: At the bottom of the Cliff's Notes and digging (Score:1)
i think the most important thing is to instill and foster genuine curiosity and enjoyment from learning and allow for far more elective learning in far more fields than what the education system provides if learning is only a chore and is too repetitive; boring; unengaging; and doesnt encourage collaboration and working together; its a big waste because that kid- especially if their parents could care less; is probably not going to be capable of caring about learning about things certain kinds of learning