A recent study of youngsters age 6 months to 6 years revealed they spend far more time staring at television or computer screens than at the pages of a book. In fact, they spend three times longer watching TV or playing video games than reading or being read to.

That’s what the Kaiser Family Foundation and Children’s Digital Media Centers discovered after conducting a survey last summer in homes across the country where at least one-third of the children have TVs in their rooms and a similar proportion live in homes where a television is on most or all of the time. The survey found the youngsters spend on average two hours and 22 minutes a day watching television, playing video games or using computers compared with 49 minutes with books.

The report concluded that children in “heavy TV households” may have more trouble learning to read than other kids who live in homes where the TV is on less often.

“Watching TV is far inferior to playing with toys, being read to, or playing with adults or talking with parents,” said Dr. Henry Shapiro, chairman of developmental and behavior pediatrics at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Yet the survey indicated that 72 percent of the parents interviewed have a largely positive view about TV and computers, saying the technology helps in their children’s learning.

Certainly, it’s true that using the new media gives children a chance to be competitive in today’s world, that laptops in every lap, so to speak, can indeed open up endless educational opportunities.

But there are clear pitfalls, as evidenced by the shrinking scores in the reading and writing sections of student achievement tests. Not to mention the extent that some children are being minded by machines rather than enjoying interaction with their parents … such special times that may prove to be priceless.

A book from my own childhood, for instance, rekindles memories of my dad reading story after story, verse after verse, each evening as Mama cooked and set the table. The storyteller’s hour, we referred to that time when the radio – and later the television- would be turned off and we’d hear of fact and fancy as Daddy would read slowly, turning the pages of familiar books in which pictures told stories and rhymes became songs.

For at least that hour most every day, we’d sit still, eyes wide as we imagined adventures and heard words of sense and nonsense; ears tuned as we listened to real stories and make-believe ones, of Bible stories and stories to play and act out.

Daddy liked reading “purpose stories” best, those fables or wise tales of life, conduct and experience. These were good stories, pleasurable to listen to, but containing homely truths. They were stories with a moral or lesson, shrewdly carried through the words.

And when he finished reading, Daddy would study our faces to see how quick we’d been to catch on; then we’d all smile with the knowledge.

That is something television and computers never will be able to replicate.