The world is divided among those who think that TV is harmful to young children, and those who don’t.

ParentCenter has a page on TV watching guidelines that says: “The best way to approach television is to think of it as refined sugar: You want your kids to enjoy the seductive stuff without consuming it to excess. So you’ll need to stay on top of the time your child spends in front of the television.”  It offers some helpful pointers, among them:

– Make television physically inconvenient
– Help your child become a critical viewer
– Go with calm, quiet programs

BabyCenter has a Community Debate section on TV viewing that gets parents to respond to the question: Do you think television contributes to developmental and/or behavioral issues in children?

There’s even an article in Slate arguing that TV really might cause Autism!

The other side of the argument?  If you haven’t already, read the brilliantly-insightful Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner where he writes that “children who watch TV don’t do any worse (or better) on early childhood test scores than kids who don’t watch.” (And then, read his blog post on how TV Really IS Dangerous!)

These articles are about all you’ll need to read on this subject, to make up your mind on the issue.

My take?  As a child, I could only dream of exploring new worlds in full-blown multimedia on almost any topic of my interest… something that NatGeo and Discovery enable today, at the mere click of a remote control.  Modern TV has opened up entirely new worlds for my little ones, and I’m glad it has.

As a parent, I restrict my 4-year-old to about an hour or two of TV per day*, so that other forms of activity and learning are also a part of her routine.  I also make sure my 1-year-old does not get more than a few minutes exposure, until he’s past the age of two.  But, I don’t ban TV viewing completely.

As the old saying goes, any thing can be good, as long as it’s in moderation.

* Update: Aug 2011: Given the plethora of screens that surround us, this criterion has been revised to reflect at most two hours per day of “screen time” that includes TVs, computers, iPads, electronic games, etc.  The only exclusion is the amazing Kindle which encourages reading without causing eye strain.