TV induced autism

Listening to the news on the radio this morning, and it appears that watching television is even worse for you than they thought - not only can it cause obesity and low IQ, but it can also apparently cause Autism.

Now, I could be a cynic, but I never saw how watching television could cause obesity. Surely, obesity is caused by having an energy input significantly larger than your energy output, and sufficient fats or oils in that input to store? No? Now, watching television can certainly contribute to the sort of sedentary lifestyle that leads to obesity, but that's a situational link - if kids sit on their beds and read all day we'll have the same effect, but no-one's going to allege that books cause obesity (unless you eat them, maybe?)

Low IQ? Isn't that more an indictment of the quality of programming rather than the mode? If all you let kids read is comics and Sun newspapers, they're going to be stunted too. Improve the quality of children's TV, encourage them to think a little, and low IQ will be less of a problem.

It's the last one, though, that really gets my goat. TV causes autism? Really? Now, sitting at home glued to the boob-tube might stunt kids socially, but that's a far cry from making them autistic. Autism is an inability to interact in a common social fashion, not a lack of experience in doing so. As well accuse television of causing paralysis, because some kids that watch TV a lot can't run very well. Autism's a mental condition, a psychological state from birth to death, not the upshot of pasty-faced lethargic blob-children who stuff their face on crisps because their parents leave them to be raised by proxy and Pokemon.