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Ban TV for young children - expert
Pre-school children should not be allowed to watch TV or play with computers, a leading expert and author claims.
Dr Aric Sigman wants to see parents and teachers encouraged to enforce an early years "buffer zone" that would ban all electronic media to protect developing brains.
He has accused ministers of ignoring scientific evidence that hours spent in front of televisions and computer screens can inflict lasting damage on young children.
Dr Sigman will spell out his radical ban-the-box plan in a lecture to the Institute of Biology in London.
The doctor, an associate fellow of the British Institute of Biology who has campaigned strongly against young people having too much access to TVs and computers, argues that Government policy is putting children at risk.
He pointed out that teachers were now legally required to show children as young as 22 months how to turn on and operate televisions and computers.
At the same time as education policies were cultivating more screen viewing by children, convincing scientific evidence of the way television and computers can harm childhood development was coming to light, said Dr Sigman.
Television viewing among children under three was linked to poor mathematical ability, reading recognition and comprehension in later years.
"Educational" DVDs for babies and toddlers were thought to hold back language acquisition, and screen viewing at all ages from one to 14 was associated with "attention damage".
In addition, violent TV programmes, DVD recordings and computer games were known to cause changes in brain functions affecting impulsiveness and aggression.
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