Parents worry about their kids eating junk food while watching television, but research suggests they should also be worried about what kids are not eating because of television.
In a study to appear in the journal Communication Research, University of Michigan's Kristen Harrison, Ph.D., an assistant professor of communication studies, surveyed 300 children ages six through eight about their television viewing habits, character preferences and perceptions about ideal body type. Using the Children's Eating Attitude Test -- a battery of questions targeting restrained eating aimed at weight loss -- Harrison found that as the kids' overall TV viewing hours increased per week, so did their number of disordered eating symptoms.
"Dieting to lose weight is the norm on television, and children may glamorize it as a 'grown-up' thing and thus start to do it themselves," Harrison explains. Her findings suggest that children don't fundamentally favor thin body types, but instead may engage in copycat dieting and exercising before they internalize the message that a thin body is the socially ideal body.
