Relationship between Television Viewing and Language Delay in Toddlers: Evidence from a Korea National Cross-Sectional Survey

PURPOSE: This study investigated the relationship between 2-year-old children’s exposure to TV and language delay. METHODS: The subjects of this study were 1,778 toddlers (906 males and 872 females) who participated in the Panel Study on Korean Children conducted in 2010. The linguistic ability of the toddlers was measured with the K-ASQ (Korean-Ages and Stages Questionnaire). The relationship between the amount of young children’s exposure to TV and language delay was analyzed with Poisson regression. RESULTS: The average daily TV watching time of 2-year-old Korean toddlers in this study was 1.21 hours. After all confounding variables were adjusted, toddlers with over 2 hours and less than 3 hours of TV watching time had 2.7 times more risk (RR = 2.74, 95% CI: 1.13–6.65) of language delay than those with less than 1 hour of TV watching time. Those with more than 3 hours of TV watching time had approximately 3 times (RR = 3.03, 95% CI: 1.12–8.21) more risk (p<0.05). In addition, the risk of language delay increased proportionately with the increase in toddlers’ TV watching time (p = 0.004). CONCLUSION: Two-year-old Korean toddlers’ average daily TV watching time of more than 2 hours was related with language delay.