Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to analyze children's television viewing habits and their parents attitudes towards such viewing. DESIGN: Cross-sectional descriptive study. SETTING: Primary care. PARTICIPANTS: A survey was undertaken with 317 three to fourteen year old children and their parents as part of the primary care check-up program for healthy children. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Time devoted to television viewing was 106 +/- 50 minutes on weekdays and 141 +/- 80 minutes weekends. Despite this, 49.2% of parents thought their children saw little television, especially those with children under six (57.6%). Children of parents in highly qualified positions and of parents in the uppermost socioeconomic group saw television the least, on non-working days (70 +/- 61 minutes and 144 +/- 78 minutes respectively, p < or = 0.0001). Some 71.9% of children watched television alone and 34% did so at meal-times. Altogether 48.3% of parents were unaware as to what their children watched and some 61.5% encouraged television viewing, above all those having children of under six (76%). The youngest children preferred to watch cartoons which were generally of a violent nature. For those aged from 11 to 14, 19.5% chose as their favorite programs those having a high level of violence. CONCLUSION: Television habits are an educational problem for parents, an important shake-up in their attitudes being called for, in which pediatricians should be involved in developing health programs aimed at proper use of the television.