Watching tv when growing up and autism ?

Post Reply New Topic

There is some contentious stuff out there about high levels of tv watching increasing the chances of a child becoming autistic. What if however children with autism/autism traits are more likely anyway to watch tv. I don't know if that is true, I'm just throwing it out there for debate.
Possibly more time stuck in front of the box would mean less time engaged in imaginative play.
I was a toddler in the late 50s/early 60s and apparently watched a lot of television. Nowadays a toddler watching lots of tv or videos would not be that unusual, but I'm not sure it was the case back in the late 50s/early 60s .

Well, to be fair the more time a child watches TV the less time they are socialising. So it could exacerbate autistic symptoms if a child does that.

It would be interesting to conduct an experiment where parents got rid of their TV and spent the time playing sports, card games reading to their children instead and seeing if it had any positive outcomes for autistic children.

People have an essential personality anyway, regardless. But no doubt too much TV and not enough else might make anyone socially inept.

I lived in an area where everything and anything was at least a few miles away. There were no places for kids to hang out and socialize. The few kids in my area my age just bullied me. My parents worked and my grandmother who was supposed to be watching me was always sleeping. There was nothing to do BUT watch TV...(even the shows I wasn't supposed to watch like Ren & Stimpy or Rocko's Modern Life) and try to forget about the bullying that happened at school that day and the bullying that was going to happen the next day and the teachers who did Jack s**t about the bullying or were the bullies themselves. There were woods behind my house I could go out and play in but my mother was convinced there was a pedophile or serial killer hiding in them so I was forbidden to play in them.

Please tell me that your joking!

I grew up in the same era as the OP. All of my friends in the neighborhood watched as much, or more TV, than I did. They also read a lot more comic books than I did ( if you're gonna scapegoat TV why not throw in comic books as well? The logic would be the same.). But they all grew up to be NT.

I had a short attention span, so I didn't watch as much TV as some children did.

It's no good trying to find a 'cause' for autism. You're autistic because you're autistic, not because of the TV. What are we going to blame next? The microwave?

TV was my best English teacher and past midnight time killer. And, definitely not my social reference nor it revolved most of my childhood.


I'm one of those kids who grew up wanting to go outside, played a lot of physical games and played pretend with other girls all day long. I'm also one of those kids who climbs trees and compete with boys, instead of staying inside playing handhelds/watching TV/reading.
I'm one of those kids who did not grew up deprived of human interaction. Negative experiences of being bullied and an outcast isn't all my social experience -- because socializing isn't limited to school, and I socialize better outside school.

That of all didn't made me less autistic. Nor gain me the social maturity that matched my age nor social interest in later life.
And definitely did not gave me the social intuition that any NTs already have to begin with because I was born without it.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

Well, I can say that my brother and I watched about the same amount of TV growing up, and only one of us is autistic.

My being diagnosed as autistic right before I turned 3 had nothing to do with TV watching.

This is one of those correlation vs causation things.

Autistic kids are likely to spend a lot of time watching TV because they are autistic, not because TV causes autism.

Honestly I'm sick to death of the whole "You never played outside as a kid, oh you poor thing" mindset. I got enough outdoor time during lunch break at school. I wasn't gonna waste my weekend playing outside when I had been waiting all week to play games and watch TV. My childhood was full of and media and it was fine and don't care if anyone thinks I should have been playing with frogs or whatever.

It's called Virtual Autism, right? It's a bunch of poopoo. But one thing I do agree on is that, if your child is sitting in front of a TV all day and not interacting with people, of course they won't be able to socialize good. If they're NT, you can put 'em in a group of other children and they'll be able to learn social skills very fast. If they're autistic, well, you probably won't see an improvement, but it depends of the person.

I came home from school to watch TV in the 60s and 70s. I was a city kid.

I was autistic before I knew what a TV was.....

I wonder if anyone would make the same case for my childhood book reading? (historically, I've no doubt it happened) I have never been a big watcher of TV, and kids shows were only on for an hour on two channels when I was a kid, but I still did a good job of avoiding socialising with the other kids!

I didn't watch very much tv when I was a toddler. I did watch more when I was older but I didn't grow up in front if it and I remember only things I watched on tv was the Disney channel or PBS. Then it was Nickelodeon and WB and I watched a channel that was called Fam. I didn't start watching lot of tv until my teen years. I started in 6th grade.