subject: How Does Watching Tv Affect Intelligence? [print this page] Louise was more humiliated and angry than an 11 year old should be. She had failed a city wide academic test which would have determined her skipping a grade. Her classmates, whom she regularly outdid on other tests, widely passed this test.
It was sometimes difficult for Louise to be as cool as the other students. When conversations came up about popular world events or television shows, she was usually unformed.
Bitterly Louis blamed her parents. They did not approve of her watching TV. The only television they kept in the house was located in the basement. It was black and white and had "rabbit ear" antennas. Needless to say, Louise did not get a lot of television watching done.
I have long felt television can increase a child's intelligence. When I tried to prove my theory with some conclusive research, I could not find clarity.
Most research I found takes a broad sweep against television as a pique to intelligence. Yet other studies claim the relationship between IQ and watching TV not to be directly negative or positive.
Some studies show that children, especially females, who watch 8 to 10 hours a week of television actually do better than not those that watch more or less.
A fascinating way to explore these facts is to explore whether television watching measured by nation, correlates to average IQ of that population, however even this analysis does not create a solid conclusion. The countries with the highest IQs globally are Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. These countries watch about three to four hours a day.
If we compare the United States to the rest of the world in IQ it is ranked at 23rd. However, the US population on average watches up to eight hours a day of television. Compare Turkey to this. Turkey on average is second at 5 hours a day in television watching. Yet their IQ is 69th in global rank.
The debate must continue on this, because the population of Ireland watches just two and a half hours a day, yet they rank 36th in the global IQ department. It seems understanding the relationship between watching television requires more intelligence than a simple blast at it.
