The amount of television that infants and their parents watched influenced children's viewing habits when they got older.
OBJECTIVE
Excessive television (TV) exposure has negative impacts on a child's development, health and behaviour. This study examined the under-researched area of what impact infant and parental TV viewing during a child's infancy had on the child's later viewing habits.


METHODS
Data on 18 577 babies born in 2005 were collected from the Taiwan Birth Cohort Study, a prospective longitudinal study of a nationally representative cohort. Group-based trajectory analysis was conducted to identify childhood TV viewing trajectories at 18, 36 and 66 months of age. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the influence of parents' TV behaviour on their children's TV viewing trajectories.


RESULTS
The percentage of children falling into the TV viewing trajectories that were identified were low (20%), increasing (46.5%) and high (33.5%). The child's TV viewing trajectory was significantly associated with the child's sex, parent's monthly household income, child's day care arrangements, maternal and paternal education, maternal and paternal TV viewing time and whether the child's TV viewing time was restricted.


CONCLUSIONS
The amount of TV that children watched when they were older was associated with a range of factors, and the results particularly highlight the need to restrict child and parental viewing time in infancy.
National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Yu-Chan
YC
Chiu
Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan, Taiwan.
Yi-Fan
YF
Li
Kainan University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Wen-Chi
WC
Wu
National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Tung-Liang
TL
Chiang
D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006184:Habits; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D013690:Television / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
Child development; Infancy; Parenting; Taiwan; Television viewing trajectory