The relationships between television viewing and the academic performance of children and teenagers have been the subject of great controversy. Popular opinion and some educators have held that television generally has had a detrimental effect—by taking up time that might be better spent acquiring basic skills or doing homework, by encouraging a preference for quick solutions and entertaining portrayals that is inconsistent with the sometimes frustrating demands of schoolwork, and by creating tastes and enthusiasms that draw young people away from intellectually demanding subject matter. In contrast, very sophisticated statistical analyses of amount of viewing and achievement scores among large samples seemingly have indicated that television has no effect when other contributing factors are taken fully into account. In fact, the actual findings of the many dozens of empirical research studies that bear...