USA’s on üha rohkem ja rohkem juurdumas kõrgmalt haritud vanemate seas arvamus, et mida vähem lapsed televiisorit vaatavad, seda parem ja see vähene, mis nad võivad teleri ees veeta, peaks koosnema õpetlikust programmist.

Kahe Chicago ülikooli majandusteadlase värske uurimus Does Television Rot Your Brain? (PDF) seab aga televiisori vaatamise kahjulikuse kahtluse alla. Slate’is on teema kenasti kokku võtnud Austan Goolsbee:

From the 1966 Coleman Report, the landmark study of educational opportunity commissioned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Gentzkow and Shapiro got 1965 test-score data for almost 300,000 kids. They looked for evidence that greater exposure to television lowered test scores. They found none. After controlling for socioeconomic status, there were no significant test-score differences between kids who lived in cities that got TV earlier as opposed to later, or between kids of pre- and post-TV-age cohorts. Nor did the kids differ significantly in the amount of homework they did, dropout rates, or the wages they eventually made. If anything, the data revealed a small positive uptick in test scores for kids who got to watch more television when they were young.