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Too much TV time for toddlers may trigger autism, according to a study by Cornell business professors. Over the past few decades, there’s been an amazing increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism. Some experts think this is due to broader diagnostic criteria for autism. Some point to vastly increased services for autistic children. Others think that something in the environment is triggering an autism epidemic.It occurred to Cornell University management professor Michael Waldman, PhD, that the increase in autism cases came at the same time as increased opportunities for very young children to watch TV. Could it be, he wondered, that the explosion in children’s TV programming, DVDs, VCRs, and video/computer games is behind the explosion in autism diagnoses?Waldman asked his colleagues in the medical world to look at the issue. Nobody would. So he assembled a research team and did the study himself — using tools more often seen in economic studies than in medical studies. The results bolstered his suspicions.

“We are not claiming that we have definitive evidence. But we have evidence that is awfully suggestive of a link between TV watching and autism,” Waldman tells WebMD. “Someone should nail this down one way or the other.”

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