Ban TV to protect your child's health, top psychologist urges European politicians | Mail Online

TV should be banned for toddlers and severely rationed for other youngsters to protect their health and family life, a leading psychologist will tell MEPs today.

Aric Sigman claims that spending hours slumped in front of TVs and computers is 'the greatest unacknowledged health scandal of our time'.

He says it is linked to ills ranging from obesity and heart disease to poor grades and lack of empathy.
Some British children spend as much as seven and a half hours a day in front of a screen - the equivalent of a full year of 24-hour days by the age of seven.

Dr Sigman, a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, believes that the youngest children, whose brains are undergoing massive development, should not watch any TV at all.

From the ages of three to 12, boys and girls should be limited to an hour a day, rising to an hour and a half for teenagers.

The psychologist will tell an EU parliamentary working group that TVs and computers should be kept out of bedrooms until a child is 15.

'Governments throughout Europe regularly advise their citizens on the most intimate health matters: from daily grams of salt intake and units of alcohol to number of sexual partners,' he will say.


Ban TV to protect your child's health, top psychologist urges European politicians | Mail Online