TV Implicated In Rise Of Autism

Cornell Business Professors' Study Links Too Much Toddler TV Time To Autism

(WebMD)  Too much TV time for toddlers may trigger autism, according to a study by Cornell business professors.

Over the past few decades, there's been an amazing increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism. Some experts think this is due to broader diagnostic criteria for autism. Some point to vastly increased services for autistic children. Others think that something in the environment is triggering an autism epidemic.

It occurred to Cornell University management professor Michael Waldman, Ph.D., that the increase in autism cases came at the same time as increased opportunities for very young children to watch TV. Could it be, he wondered, that the explosion in children's TV programming, DVDs, VCRs, and video/computer games is behind the explosion in autism diagnoses?

Waldman asked his colleagues in the medical world to look at the issue. Nobody would. So he assembled a research team and did the study himself — using tools more often seen in economic studies than in medical studies. The results bolstered his suspicions.

"We are not claiming that we have definitive evidence. But we have evidence that is awfully suggestive of a link between TV watching and autism," Waldman tells WebMD. "Someone should nail this down one way or the other."

Waldman will present the study at this week's National Bureau of Economic Research health economics conference.

Autism is usually diagnosed when a child is about 3 years old. Any effect of TV watching would have to happen before that age. But few studies, Waldman found, have compiled statistics on the TV habits of U.S. toddlers.

But there are statistics, compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, on when families watch TV and how much TV they watch. These statistics show that toddlers watch more television when it's raining outside than when it isn't raining.

Waldman and colleagues then looked at county-by-county autism rates in California, Oregon, and Washington. All three states have huge regional variations in annual rainfall. Sure enough, Waldman found that autism rates tended to be higher in the rainiest counties.

"We ran the tests a number of different ways, and basically every way we run it, we get the same thing. If it rains more, autism goes up. If it rains less, autism goes down," Waldman says. "That is a fine theory by itself, but still one can't be sure it is TV and not some other indoor toxin that is to blame."

So the researchers did a second test: They looked at the percentage of houses that subscribed to cable television in California and Pennsylvania. Cable television, Waldman reasoned, was linked not only to more TV watching, but also to the availability of more programming for very young children.

Sure enough, they found that areas with the most cable TV subscribers had the most autistic children. "Our view is there is no obvious thing correlated with both rain and cable-TV access except television viewing," Waldman says.

Until more direct studies confirm or disprove this conclusion, Waldman and colleagues recommend that parents follow the American Academy of Pediatricians' recommendation of no TV before age 2, and no more than an hour or two of TV a day for older children.

Child development expert Leslie Rubin, M.D., finds Waldman's study interesting. But he does not think it proves a link between autism and television viewing. Rubin is director of developmental pediatrics at Emory University and director of the center for developmental medicine at the Marcus Institute, Atlanta.

"They are looking at trends in the diagnosis of autism more than the actual prevalence of autism itself," Rubin tells WebMD. "They correlate these diagnostic trends with rain and county, and at another level with the proliferation of cable TV and stuff like VCRs and DVDs and computer games. They all happened at the same time, but I can't see that one is the cause of the other."

This doesn't mean that Rubin rejects Waldman's idea that TV can trigger autism.

"TV viewing might be associated with autism if a child has that tendency and is not forced or coaxed or encouraged to engage in social interactions but instead is allowed to sit in front of a television," he says. "The whole goal of autism treatment is to encourage social interactions. We know that makes the single biggest difference in children's outcomes — how they relate to others. So if they watch TV instead of interacting, they are going to get more withdrawn."

Like Waldman, Rubin says Americans — including medical researchers — don't pay enough attention to what television does to kids. "We use TV for babysitting, as a substitute for social interactions, as the sole form of entertainment for children and families," he says. "Instead of kids going out to socialize, they stay home and watch TV. So if they have tendencies toward autism, these would be accentuated by the absorption of TV instead of being challenged by social interactions."

Obviously, Rubin isn't just talking about kids with autism. He's talking about all of our kids — and all of us.

"Social experiences are important for kids as they grow up. Social experiences shape a person's life," he says. "If children watch TV for most of their lives, I think there will be some sort of negative impact. This may well be associated with some diagnostic condition."

SOURCES: Waldman, M. "Does Television Cause Autism?" Johnson School at Cornell University Web site, downloaded Oct. 17, 2006. Michael Waldman, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Leslie Rubin, M.D., director of developmental pediatrics, Emory University; director, Center for Developmental Medicine, Marcus Institute, Atlanta.

[tbooton-2009]

It amazes me that this study is dignified with any press whatsoever. Yes, tv viewing has increased dramatically since the autism epidemic began, but so has the number of required childhood vaccinations. As the parent of an autistic son, I would like legitamate research completed by an unbiased source comparing health outcomes of vaccinated children versus an unvaccinated population of children in this country.

I certainly think it is far more plausible that some genetically susceptible subgroup of children have bad reactions to vaccines(or their components) that causes the neuroinflammtion seen in autistic children. How does television cause these neurological symptoms? What is the biological mechanism that triggers autism?? This is just another researcher trolling his bogus idea to attain a research grant.

[jendoll1]

As a mother of an 8-year-old autistic child, are they crazy! I watch almost no TV, 90% of any video my son may have watched before age 23 months before his diagnosis would have been "Spot". Which is a non-background, non-distractive video, it's not even really animated. I would describe it as a toddler book on video. Although I believe there is no "one" factor or cause of autism, I do believe that there are as in many disabilities "contributors" that may increase the severity of the condition. TV most certainly may be one of those "contributors" but NOT A CAUSE.

[sarena1964]

Considering 85-90% of Big Pharma marketing money is not spent on ad's, rather on doctors and symposiums (I wonder if the good Doctors have a conflict of interest here....). My biggest problem is DISCLOSURE - we were never told of the toxic additives, and in many cases it wasn't disclosed to the doctors.

My autisic neice & nephew were "normal" until 18 months old - they changed shortly after their shots. One child had terrible red painful legions all over - surely a MERCURY allergic reaction. We were never asked if she was alergic to lead, arsenic, mercury or T.V.

Maybe the good doctor should still to illusions about the economy versus his scientific speculation. I would like to see how this doctor would react to 100 times the acceptable safety limit for mercury....yes, I would pay to see that!

[cathaleen]

Oh my God! What next - bad potty training causes autism. I have an autistic son and I'll go with those massive vacine shots or just maybe God's will.

[quasi123]

While nearly all of the comments here are the same, I think it's important to realize that no one is trying to assign blame here, and if research is to truly more forward, no stone should be left unturned.

The problem from what I read here is that if the doctors and medical community worldwide are biased, and therefore any study done by the medical community are biased, then it will be impossible for an 'unbaised' study; any study that fails to find a link between vaccines and autism is by definition biased; the only 'unbiased' studies will be done by people with no medical training. That doesn't sound very helpful.

In fact, the word 'cause' isn't even used in the article; correlation is the strongest word used and even that's hedged; if the only response to such things is immediate defensive posturing, that's not helping anyone. Is this going down the wrong path? Perhaps. And perhaps vaccines are the wrong path. Perhaps, as said above, there are many triggers and causes and correlations, and every bit of knowledge will help.

So long as studies like this: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/06/health/webmd/main1781965.shtml don't come up with useful data, I'm not sure what else can be done but keep looking everywhere possible.

[kenny829]

I have done alot of reading on the subject. It seems that there is a genetic dispostion, that is triggered by some external factor (in my opinion which does not mean beans, I am not a medical Doctor)

Did it ever occur to the boy wonder who did the study, that the parents were using the TV to subdue or lesson sysmptons that were already present?? TV can tame the wildest of toddlers.

I would give credence to the heavy metal (mercury) supposition. Why anyone would use a mercury derivitive as a preservative for child immunization is beyond me. And if not from childhood vaccinations, what about the tons of mercury released in the enviornmnet every year from burning coal??

[electron23]

my brother has something just lke autism and all he watched was thomas then tank engine.. I mean really could that have done anything? no. stupid people!

[talkingham]

Maybe this guy could consider just how much corn syrup (high frutose and others in just about everything packaged), and the amount of trans-fat that the average child has consumed since Coca Cola and the other food giants started filling everything with these "poisons" since about 1980. The amount of corn products and fake fat products in the diet of children is staggering and most people still don't bother to read lables. Why does it take 40 or 50 artificial substances to make ice cream now? -- because these people are crooks and it's cheaper to sell you poison than it is to sell you real ice cream Mr. Economics genius.

Might be a lack of exercise and parental involvement as well. I doubt "watching" anything has much of affect other than the beams of electrons that spew out of CRTs could be the most damaging aspect of the tube. Has he compared CRTs to LCDs- doesn't look like it. This is absurdly bad "scince" as far as I can tell that overlooks a myriad issues and ignores the fact that there seems to be a strong family-genetic link to these disorders related to how a child's brain develops in the first 3 years.

[spazoid6]

hopefully after this study people will stop buying their 1 month old baby so called 'educational' videos. I truly hope this article will influence some people to keep their infants away from ANY television programming.

[LorinT]

I think Michael Waldman's conclusions are a bit far-fetched. After being closely involved with autistic children, here's my take on things:

http://tinyurl.com/ykdr4v

-Lorin