Recently, Disney offered parents refunds for their purchases of Baby Einstein videos. The reason: the parents' babies weren't getting smarter after watching the videos, which had been the claim.
Today Stanton Peele, a blogger for Psychology Today, picked up on this story, and took it a huge step farther, asking - do videos cause autism? Here's how he puts it:
The play in schoolyards and preschools has slid toward more scripted acting. . . . An important determinant of a child's empathy and flexibility in play is how much TV and video programming he is exposed to. [emphasis in original]. . . .The TV or video experience tends to isolate the child. As he plays, his attention is on the images in his mind, not on the child next to him. ... Does acting in terms of an internal script - as opposed to reacting and being sensitive to others - sound familiar? It certainly has tones reminiscent of autism.
In other words, if your child watches too much TV, could he "go autistic?"
Interesting theory. I suspect it's based on an incorrect understanding of what autism really is - and what it isn't.
A child who plays "Hannah Montana" or "Jimmy Neutron" with his friends on the playground may be using a script. A child with autism may use a similar script. But he's not playing "Jimmy Neutron" with his friends. He's repeating the script over and over, to himself. Very often, he's repeating the words, not as ideas or as dialog, but as sounds.
If you were to ask the child who's playing "Jimmy Neutron" with his friends (using a memorized script) to tell you about Jimmy, he'd explain that Jimmy's the science whiz who can invent anything. If you were to ask the child with autism to tell you about Jimmy, chances are he wouldn't be able to do so - because his language and social communication skills are compromised.
As with so much else in the world of autism, opinions are as tied to appearances as they are to cause and effect. It LOOKS like autism could be caused by a thousand things - because a thousand things have changed since the rates of autism diagnosis started to rise.
Yes, kids started watching more TV. But at the same time... the Internet was invented, along with backpacks-on-wheels, cell phones, recycling bins and yogurt-in-a-tube. We've seen an increase in the amount of stir-frying and the use of jicama in American cuisine. Statistically, all of these things can be tied to an increase in autism diagnoses (along with a very real increase in asthma and allergies).
Meanwhile, my personal opinion is that video and TV, properly selected and used (as opposed to simply droning in the background) has tremendous potential to help kids with autism build social skills, connect with new ideas and interests, and become more aware of the culture around them.
For more on my take on TV and autism, you might want to read my article Good Reasons for Allowing Autistic Children to watch TV and Videos.
I think the Autism video article was triggered by this study
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,00.html
I don’t think all children’s DVDS are bad. I love baby signing time, and signing time
By the time my daughter started to school, never having attended any preschool, she could recognize and say the letters of the alphabet, count, and knew her colors and shapes, all from watching educational videos. And yes, she was able to transfer them to other situations.
God here we go again with the TV crap. As far as NT kids. Long before TV they acted out the stories they were told and played family based off of the script of daily life. My husband who is a published author will tell you the first “novel” he wrote was when he was 10. His brother quickly pointed out like all siblings would that it was a complete rip off of another book. Does that man all my husbands writings since are also a copy of others writing? No for all creative actions first start as copies of other creations we value. Artiste learn to paint by coping the masters. Composers first compose songs similar to music that someone else created. You always copy before you learn to create. Hell that is how language is past on. Its just with Autism the process of moving beyond copying does not happen if the process of copying even occurs.
We often heard in evaluations that our son (diagnosed with PDD-NOS) was not imitating and that he had no imaginary play going on. I have heard from the beginning of his life to limit TV. With my oldest child I didn’t really let him watch TV until he was 2…so I was a big “rule follower” in this area even before I had a child with red flags for autism, but I will say I LOVE your list and agree that “screen time” has helped my son. (and us as parents as well) My son LOVES Toy Story. He sings his heart out to “You’ve Got a Friend In Me.” ….which his Kindergarten teacher has used some in their classroom. If you listen to the words, this song is so adorable!! Potato Head is one of his favorite things in life and we TOTALLY use it. Potato Head helped him get his hair cut for the first time in almost 6 months yesterday!!!! BIG victory!!! …and Potato Head (which he loved before the movie but loves more afterward) was part of that. Also, he borrows humor from the movie to make us laugh. He often contorts his face and arms and says, “Mommy, I Picasso!”
…borrowing from a line in the movie. He also rearranges all the Potato Head parts and pretends to be Potato Head’s voice saying, “I’m Picasso.” It’s amazing how much he draws from the movie, but he uses it in appropriate ways. For the first time in his 5 years, he is playing appropriately with toys with his little brother…using some lines from the movie…but mostly spontaneous language as they play. I could watch this all day! It’s PRICELESS! I want to thank Buzz and Woody!!! 
Seriously, his Kindergarten teacher even purchased a Potato Head for her classroom to help him when needed. She told me on Friday that for the first time since he started to school, he started playing with some children during free center time. He shared his Potato Head!!! 
Very exciting stuff! No guilt TV!! We don’t watch TV every day, but when we do, I don’t feel guilty like I did if we did when he was a little younger. Great list you wrote!! Yeah for no guilt for parents thriving with ASD in the house!!!!
The whole “Does TV cause autism?” thing makes me laugh since I had to “teach” my child with autism to watch TV (as terrible as that sounds) and that was years after her diagnosis. It only makes me laugh further when I consider that it’s my highly social NT child that I have to put TV time limits on. And in the name of anecdotal evidence, I know many children with ASD who were addicted to TV as toddlers who have far better communication/ social skills than my child who never watched TV and spent her days in an early intervention program with trained therapists.
Although I think too much TV is bad for anyone, and could increase “stimmy” behaviour for some children with ASD if they’re not getting enough exercise, I think it can also be a great educational tool for visual learners! I believe it’s extra important though to be aware of the content/quality of the programming a child with ASD watches since they are more likely to keep/use the scripts they learn and could be confused by things like fictional violence.
THIS QUESTION IS A STUPID ONE!
A BIG FAT NO!!!!!
I WOULD SAY IT HAS HELPED MY SON WITH SOME OF HIS COMMUNICATON, SOCIAL, AND MORE. MANY AUTIES ARE VISUAL LEARNERS.
This would be far more satisfying if the root problem turned out to be Barney.
Why is anyone still paying any attention to psychologists on autism causation? I think its time to downgrade this science as a whole to just a step above astrology. My apologies to the astrologists. What do astrologists have to say on autism? Is this a bad phase for causation, or a good phase for enlightenment?
I’d like to wait a few years and see if the Baby Einstein generation heads more into engineering. Already we see robotics clubs becoming the new cool HS activity.
So Disney is making good on false advertising. The thing with TV or actual modeling and interaction with people, any image could be stuck in the head of a child with autism. It’s not that TV causes autism, it more contributes to more content for the child with autism to be stuck on. If anything, TV would better help the child learn since it’s more predictable and repetitious than people are. The core of autism Is lack of empathy, flexibility central coherence and so on. TV doesn’t cause that.
I also agree, if our kids turned into Barney’s I’d have much more to say on the topic.
Sure it’s healthier to spend more time running around outside and playing with friends and getting some sunshine and fresh air. But to me the theory that excessive TV watching causes autism is ridiculous. I sincerely doubt that the 2-3 year olds diagnosed with autism during the past 20 years had watched so much more TV than the 2-3 year olds during the prior 20 years, or than the non-autistic 2-3 year olds.
I have to agree that TV is a powerful teaching tool for those on the autism spectrum. My daughter counted to twenty when she was two, thanks to Richard Scarry’s Best Counting Video Ever! She is now six, still has no functional language, but I know that she knows what numbers look like and what they mean. Yes, she may have been able to learn this elsewhere,but this was pleasurable for her, and I think we all learn more when we enjoy what we are doing. Regarding limits- my girl loves her TV, but she also loves to be outside, loves to play in water, and loves to set up “scenes/episodes” of what she watches. We all are trying to do the best things for our offspring, and should be able to trust our gut instincts in this matter- You do know when things are right for your child no matter what the “experts” say. As far as Barney goes-Just say no!;)
There likely is a connection between very early in life video screen watching and Autism. Having a newborn placed in front of a video for hours every day cannot lead to anything good. There may be various causes for Autism.Comforting a newborn by imprisioning him in front of an inane video is surely one of them.