Since becoming a mother, I keep on running across the same weird claim. It goes something like this: TV is bad for kids because it limits their imagination. Tell your kids to get outside and play! Don’t let them veg out in front of a TV all day! They’ll never learn imaginative play. I’ve had other mothers and even teachers tell me this in conversations about why they didn’t allow their own children to watch television or play with iPhones or really have any screen time whatsoever. What makes the claim weird is that the moms who tell me this are rarely creatives. I also have a hard time believing this claim, because I 1) make a living off my imagination, and 2) was one of those kids who was practically raised by a television. I know a few people who were raised without televisions. I won’t speak to their imaginations, but none of them are in creative fields. And I don’t personally know one creative who grew up without a television in their home. In fact, some of the most creative people I know watch obscene amounts of television to this day. In many ways, television gives children more great stuff to imagine. How limited would a toddler’s world view be if there weren’t any children’s programming today. When I was a child, I built living room forts and pretended to drive the car to places like K-Mart. When I picked my daughter up at preschool the other day, she and some other kids were pretending to have tea on a rocket, which they planned to take to the flower shop before they headed to outer space. I didn’t even know China existed when I was three. My daughter has already asked to...