The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a long history of releasing policy statements on media which are both wildly alarmist and grossly inaccurate. These include their controversial claims about “Facebook Depression” in 2011, their problematic and unrealistic recommendations on screen time, and past biased statements regarding media violence, which once infamously inflated the number of studies by a factor of about ten (mistakenly claiming 3500 studies existed when, in fact, there were a couple hundred). In July, 2016, the AAP have added to their unscientific litany a new policy statement that reads as strangely defensive and frustrated (indeed, ironically enough, even “aggressive”) but distorts the research evidence as more consistent and worrisome than it currently is.
Worth Sharing: New American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement on “Virtual Violence” is, Basically, Nuts: Why Parents and Policy Makers Can Ignore It
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