Teenagers who spend less time glued to television screens are also likely to relate better to their friends and parents, a new University of Otago study suggests.
The study, published in the latest issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, showed that the risk of having a low attachment to their parents increased about 4% for every hour a day on average the teens spent watching television.
And young people who watched more TV tended to have poorer relationships with both their friends and parents.
The research also offered some reassurance for parents worried that restricting family TV viewing might make it more difficult for their children to relate to their friends.
One of the study authors, Dr Rose Richards, said some parents had been concerned that their children might feel excluded if they were not watching the same TV programmes as their friends.
But the findings suggested it was "fine to limit TV viewing".
"In fact, it may result in stronger relationships between young people, their friends and their parents."
Strong relationships with parents and friends were important for healthy development from teenage years into adulthood, she said.
Dr Richards is based in the Cancer Society Social and Behavioural Research Unit and the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit.
Her co-authors include Prof Rob McGee, Associate Prof Sheila Williams, Associate Prof Bob Hancox and Dr David Welch, the latter now of Auckland University.
The findings came out of the Dunedin multidisciplinary study and a national Youth Lifestyle Study conducted 16 years later, in 2004.
The researchers assessed interview responses from 976 members of the Dunedin study who were 15 years old between 1987 and 1988.
The later lifestyle study involved 3043 adolescents aged between 14 and 15.
Prof Hancox said he "wasn't terribly surprised" that the earlier Dunedin study was still relevant.
Although the nature of screen-based entertainment had changed, the association with family relationships appeared the same.
Average television watching by teens had risen slightly from three hours a day in the late 1980s to 3.2 in 2004.
These days young people were also playing electronic games and using computers for entertainment - an average of about 1.3 hours a day, he said.
