Is TV A Bully-Maker?

If you park your kids in front of the tube too often, you may be increasing the odds that they'll become bullies later on, a new study shows.

According to research in this month's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, the more television young children watch, the more likely they are to become bullies.

Just a small, incremental increase in how much TV 4-year-olds watch translated into an increase in the child's probability of bullying by 25 percent, the study's authors concluded.

The youngsters the study found were more likely to become bullies watched an average of five hours of TV a day, and those less likely watched just over three hours daily.

On the other hand, the study says kids whose parents read to them, take them on outings, and generally pay more attention to them are less likely to become bullies.

Dr. Joseph Wright is a director at Children's National Medical Center and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. He's also an expert on childhood violence.

He tells The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler bullying is a common experience for American school children. For years, it's been written off as "kids being kids." However, recent studies show that victims of bullies frequently show great emotional and physical problems long after being bullied. Research has also shown a drop in educational achievement, and increased rates of depression among bully victims.

In the U.S., we're just coming to understand that bullying is a problem. It's a major public issue, affecting about 30 percent of school-age children in the U.S., according to background information in the article.

However, Wright adds, bullying is, to some degree, normal behavior. We have to monitor kids to see if and when aggressive behavior crosses the line. Early bullying can certainly be a risk factor for more violent forms of bullying, and other forms of violence.

The idea that TV could make kids more likely to become bullies isn't new. The AAP has long advocated that parents not allow more than an hour or two of TV a night. For a long time, there has been an understood link between television watching (though more heavily focused on violent TV and media) and violence in the child's life.

But, Wright points out, what's different in this study is that the authors don't separate violent TV from shows like "Sesame Street" and "Blue's Clues." This study found that, across the board, more TV led to more bullies -- no matter what the programming was.

The authors said that they didn't have the ability to know what the kids were watching. But we already know that more than 50 percent of what kids watch contains violence. Therefore, it's a pretty good guess that the more TV kids are exposed to, the more violence they're going to see.

The AAP published a study last summer that showed that parents find it difficult to monitor what their kids are watching, and it's very clear that kids are seeing a lot more television than what the AAP recommends.

"What this study points out," Wright stresses, "is that we really need to more closely monitor and restrict television viewing for young people. The academy holds it as a policy that children under 2 shouldn't be permitted to watch television at all, and that young children should be restricted to one to two hours a day.

"One of the nice things about this study is that, it appears that, if we reduce the viewing by just a couple of hours, we can have an impact on the development of bullying behavior downstream."

Parents should be monitoring their kids' TV watching, because even a half hour less a day can make a positive impact.