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for selling that innocence.

The task force proved that after even one advertising exposure, children showed a preference for the advertised products (which are almost exclusively unwholesome foods and mass-market toys). The children will then put pressure on parents to buy these products for them. The advertisers count on this; why else would they invest millions of dollars in advertising on children's tv shows?

Additionally, it is estimated that the typical American has watched 200,000 murders on TV by the age of 18. If advertising has an effect, wouldn't it stand to reason that witnessing violence day in and day out has an effect as well? The American Psychological Association states that exposure to violence in the media causes three types of problems for children:

A. They can learn aggressive behavior.

B. They can become desensitized to aggressive behavior around them.

C. They can develop a fear of being victimized by others' aggression.

And in case you think that the content of TV programming is only an issue for small children, a new study reported by the Washington Post in November 2008 states that 12 to 17 year olds who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least amount of sexual TV content. This study observed 700 teens, and was carefully conducted over a duration of three years.

As unsettling as these studies are (and there are hundreds of similar research studies), the larger problem remains not WHAT children are watching on TV, but HOW MUCH they are watching.

Let's consider the HOW MUCH issue now:

Researchers at Children's Hospital of Seattle conducted a study with 1 to 3 year olds, whose brains are quickly developing. The researchers found that every hour of daily television that these toddlers watch results in a 10% higher risk of developing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder by age 7. Since the same researchers found that toddlers of this age watch an average of 2 to 3 hours per day, and 30% of them have a television in their bedrooms, this amounts to a significantly elevated risk of ADHD.

A different study of children ages 1 to 4 showed that every hour a young child watches TV per day increases their risk of being overweight by six percent. And if the TV set is in the child's bedroom, the odds of being overweight jumped an additional 31% for every daily hour watched.

It was in the wake of this research that the American Academy of Pediatrics adopted standards which

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