Children who watch decent television turn out to be better kids, according to a new study published in Pediatrics. Researchers studied more than 600 families with children between the ages of 3 and 5 and asked half of them to go on a media diet, moving away from violent programming and instead watching shows with more educational and pro-social content such as “Dora the Explorer” and “Sesame Street.” Six months later, children who were exposed to better television were more likely to share and less likely to lash out aggressively than their peers. Boys of low-income families saw the most marked improvement. The study was so successful that many families asked researchers to continue to provide them with television viewing advice. “We’ve known for decades that kids imitate what they see on TV,” says Dimitri Christakis, lead author and director for the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. “They imitate good behaviors and they imitate bad behaviors.” (Time)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and two children. Follow him on Twitter.