Television may interfere with playtime. (Michael Temchine for The New York Times)

Many parents watch the news or other shows as children play nearby.
But new research shows that even when the television is just background
noise, it may be disruptive to a child’s normal development.

It’s estimated that 75 percent of very young children in the United
States live in homes where the television is on most of the time, even
though the kids often aren’t watching it. University of Massachusetts
researchers recently studied how TV background noise might affect young
children. The study, published in the current issue of the journal Child Development,
looked at 50 1-, 2- and 3-year-olds. Each child came to a lab with a
parent and was allowed to play for an hour with various toys. For half
the time, a television was on in the room, showing an episode of the
adult game show Jeopardy! as well as commercials. During the other half
hour, the TV was turned off.

As expected, the children paid little attention to the adult
television show, glancing at it for less than a few seconds at a time,
and less than once a minute. Even so, the distraction of the background
noise had a significant effect on how children at every age played.
When the television was on, the children played with each toy for
significantly shorter periods of time, and focused attention during
play was also shorter compared to how they played when the TV was off.

Researchers said that even though the children weren’t interested in
the show, background TV is an “ever-changing audiovisual distractor’’
that disrupts their ability to sustain various types of play. The
finding is important because many well-meaning parents who wouldn’t let
their young children watch television may not realize that even adult
programs that don’t interest children still can have an effect.

“Background TV is potentially a chronic environmental risk factor
affecting most American children,’’ said Marie Evans Schmidt, a
research associate at the Center on Media and Child Health at
Children’s Hospital in Boston and lead author of the study. “Parents
should limit their young children’s exposure.”