Television has come a long way since its invention in the 1900’s. When the subject of Television comes up, I automatically think of all the cartoons and shows I watched as a child. The shows I watched had no violence or bad words in them. If you start comparing the T.V shows to this modern day the results would shock you. But beside the violence that Television bring to children, when did T.V get so addictive? Nowadays television or shows on a IPAD has become the newest way to keep children entertained. My mother wished some days that I could watch a show on T.V instead of being outside constantly. Children between the ages of 2 and 11 years old watched approximately 25 hours of television a week, which means they spend more time watching T.V than in school. Experts believe that by watching T.V. can harm a babies’ developing,hearing, vision, and attention span. Because the images are flat and not three-dimensional, the images move rapidly with poor sound quality, and is not interactive. The best development for your baby, is real life interactions with people, and to experience real emotions, play, and talk. There is nothing wrong with letting your child watching T.V, it is for how long your let your child watch and how it affects him/her. Watching T.V for too long takes time out of your child’s life for more important aspects in life. Watching T.V. takes time away from your child developing important skills, like language, motor skills, fine skills, their creativity, and physical movements. Language development, for example, a child’s language development doesn’t improve by listening to passive language, it improves by real life interactions with other people. Researches has not proven that television violence leads to violent behavior, but it is definitely not healthy for a child to be exposed to television violence everyday, week after week. Researchers did prove that television violence does in fact have at least four effects on children. Children become less sensitive to pain and suffering of others, they become more aggressive toward others, they become more fearful to the world, and they may get an unrealistic sense of the amount of true violence that exists in the world.
Television definitely has bad effects on growing children, but all T.V isn’t bad. Starting with the positive factors of watching T.V. parents need to look at it as an resource. Television can
Expose children to different activities they might be interested in. Children can learn about all different kinds of things by watching specific programs, like real educational programs, history channel, science channel, music, architecture and so many other more that doesn’t have include sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence. Children can build analytical skills by discussing media. While watching a movie with your child, you can start conversation about the plot and movie characters. Co-viewing can help them improve their thinking, learning, discussing, solving, and predicting skills. Commercials is essentially part of the negative effects, but parents can change it into a positive by teaching their children the real meaning behind commercials.
The most negative effect that television had on children is violence. Violence desensitizes a child’s emotions and feelings towards others around him/her. The consequences the ‘bad people” have on a children’s show can’t be compared to what the consequences in life would be. Sometimes the show even fails to reveal the consequences. Another negative effect is nutrition and obesity. How many food commercials do you see on T.V per day? I’m guessing a lot. Sometimes food commercials make it seem that eating unhealthy is “cool”. Not only are they seeing food commercials in their “children shows”, but they also see it in commercials. Hours spent in front of the television is hours of inactive eating. According to Dr. Hernan Delgado, television is the leading source of children being exposed to sex. Content involving sex that are meant for adult are viewed by children too early. These content makes risky sexual behaviors seem happy, cool,and exciting,but yet again they fail reveal the consequences that comes with. Studies has also shown that children who watch sexual content in early stages are more likely to have sexual intercourse earlier than children who are not exposed to sex related content.
