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CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview With Nadine Kaslow

Aired March 30, 2002 - 07:52   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Excess time in front of the tube is not good for kids. I guess that's not a news flash, but maybe this is more quantified than you have heard it before; in fact, several studies have come to the conclusion. But a study released this past week suggests watching too much television as children can produce violent adults.

Psychologist Nadine Kaslow is here to talk about it. Dr. Kaslow is with Emory University and she joins us here in Atlanta.

I should point out at the outset here, you're not one of the authors of the study, correct?

NADINE KASLOW, PSYCHOLOGIST, EMORY UNIVERSITY: That's correct. I am not.

O'BRIEN: But you're familiar with its findings?

KASLOW: I am.

O'BRIEN: Why don't you just give us -- if you could give us a thumbnail on what the study attempted to accomplish and what its basic conclusion was?

KASLOW: What the study attempted to do was to look at television watching in childhood, early adolescence, approximately age 14, and then follow these individuals 17 years later -- so into their early 30s, to look at whether or not rates of violent crime were higher the more television you watched.

And, indeed, what they did find is the more television you watched, the more you were likely to engage in aggressive acts, particularly towards other people.

Of particular note, what they did is they also controlled for some significant variables like crime in your neighborhood, parental neglect, psychiatric problems, and still found this association.

O'BRIEN: All right. I guess there's a lot of questions here, and the question is: How do you whittle away television from the entire environment here? A lot of the questions relate to that.

KASLOW: That's correct. O'BRIEN: Let's go to an e-mail, shall we? "Can the -- can the author say more about the other variables controlled in his research?" Once again, Dr. Kaslow is not the author, but she can talk about that -- "that is, has he determined that the amount of TV viewing causing aggression, or is he is saying there is a link or correlation? For example, among kids who see a lot of TV, did he control for other possible explanations, such as less participation in better activities -- reading, sports -- insufficient time/attention from parents, less social interaction with peers and adults."

This comes from Leslie Cameron. Great question, Leslie.

How do you do that in any study, winnow that out so that you're really looking at just television?

KASLOW: Well, that's a fantastic question, and actually it would be impossible to do a study where you really just looked at television. That would require you to randomly assign to one group people who watched a certain amount of television and people randomly assigned people to another group who didn't.

And that really would be ethically very difficult and practically very difficult to do. So he did his best and he tried to control for some significant variables.

However, he did not -- the researchers were not able to control for some of the very good variables Leslie talked about, like involvement in extracurricular activities.

O'BRIEN: So I mean it's probably a safe conclusion to say that in a household where a teen is watching four hours-plus of television per day, there are some other issues, perhaps, at work there.

KASLOW: That's absolutely true. It may have to do with how much time the parents watch television. It may have to do with the quality of family time, whether or not the teen is involved in extracurricular activities with their peers. So many factors come into play.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's get a phone call in. A.J. is in Ohio. Good morning, A.J.

CALLER: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Do you have a question?

CALLER.: I've worked with children for over 25 years, from day cares through public school systems, and I have seen in the years a lot of children acting out what they have seen, especially if they are permitted to watch horror movies with violence.

When it's come to nap time, for instance, that's when the child will talk to the caregiver about something that's disturbing them, and I have personally experienced oftentimes that kind of a violence that they don't understand, that was very frightening to them.

So I feel that children need guidance from adults to understand what alternatives there are to wanton acts of violence that they see repeatedly in television and movies.

And they need to understand that violence is a part of a life. It can be a life-saving thing. We have that as a self-defense mechanism in it.

O'BRIEN: All right, A.J., I'm going to cut you off here because I want to get over to Dr. Kaslow here and point out an important thing. The study didn't look at just violent programming. It was -- whether it's "Teletubbies" or "The Sopranos," it's sort of the same net effect. That's an interesting finding.

KASLOW: That's a fascinating finding. And what it suggests is that there is something about just sitting alone watching television that may be associated with later difficulties. It would be helpful, however, if we saw whether watching violence or nonviolent TV made a difference. But we know that TV shows for kids tend to be violent.

I would agree very much with our caller that it's really important for family members to talk to kids about what they're watching on TV.

O'BRIEN: All right, very quickly, because we did talk about this in advance, people talking about CNN. "I keep CNN on a great deal," says Susan in Virginia. "I always try to discuss what's going on with my children. Am I harming them by letting them see too much news, especially in the context of what we've been talking about all this morning?"

Is news programming, in particular, harmful to children? And I need a fairly quick answer, I'm sorry.

KASLOW: I think that, as with all television, it's not harmful to children if you watch it with them, if you talk to them about it and you provide a safe place for them to know what's going on.

O'BRIEN: Good words to end it with. Nadine Kaslow with Emory University, a psychologist, thank you for being with us and fielding some questions and some e-mails.

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