According to an article published in the journal Pediatrics, the amount of time for which children are exposed to `background TV' is "startling" --- nearly three minutes of background TV for every one minute of TV viewing, on any typical day!

Furthermore, as per the article, the incidence of exposure to background TV is even higher in case a TV set is placed in the child's bedroom or if the TV has not been turned off when there is no one watching it.

With the article - based on a 2009 national telephonic survey conducted by Matthew Lapierre from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and colleagues from other institutions - noting that the noise of the TV in the background is apparently doing children a lot of harm, researchers have pointed out that background TV noise can be deemed as a TV counterpart of second-hand smoke.

The article is quite a significant one, given the fact that while parents are often cautioned against permitting their children to watch TV for long hours, or allow them to watch the `wrong' programs, not much attention has been drawn to the harmful effects of background TV.

With the researchers noting that background TV can have an adverse impact on children's ability to learn and concentrate, Dr. David Walsh who has been examining the media's effects on children - said that background TV "actually is having an impact in terms of their language development and in terms of their attention."