Effect of Watching Too Much Tv

Television and cable and satellite are great inventions, but humans tend to misuse them. On TV, there is barely any restriction on what can be diffused. As a matter of fact, violence, crime and nudity are the most frequent themes shown on TV. An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV by age 18, said the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Children imitate the violence they see on TV. Children under age eight cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, making them more vulnerable to learning from and adopting as reality the violence they see on TV(American Academy of Pediatrics). Indeed these enormous amount of hours watching TV when at home leads to changes not only in eating habits and health, but also on one’s psychology and eventually the impact on the social life.

Watching too much TV can affect you eating habits. When kids get back from school, when parents get back from work, with their about just about to explode, they want to relax, so they sit back on the couch and open up the TV. Then they go grab something to eat and drink to increase the excitement of watching TV. My point is, when you are supposed to have lunch at a certain time in the day, with your family, and you have already eaten snacks before, you no longer have the appetite and you end up eating at a later hour, or even eating nothing. Therefore your meals are not equally distributed throughout the day, which is recommended for a constant contribution of energy.
Another change is also physical. People spend an average of 4 hours and 34 minutes a day according to the Nielsen Company, a Marketing Intelligence Service. They eat snacks nonstop, not even realizing when they get stuffed, but what they don’t realize the most is that they are putting on a lot of weight. Obesity becomes then a major problem of TV. You must take into account that many people are way off the 4 hours and 34 minutes average and spend more hours eating. People literally can spend a whole day lying on the couch, doing nothing except watching tv and eating snacks. Matter of fact, this lack of activity increases the chances of getting fat.
Now let’s talk about the psychological effect of watching too much tv.
People are exposed to violence through TV. Kids are mainly the most important case. Movies like The Matrix, or Superman, may seem a bit exaggerated and far-fetched, but for kids those characters become their idols and they want to imitate them. Can you picture a kid climbing up the dresser to jump hoping they are going to fly? This is a typical attitude witnessed by a lot of parents. Another thing which is more related to teens and adults is the mature and explicit content in movies. They try to act like the guy with the cigar and the gun and fighting all the time, thinking they will look as cool as the guy did, and they also start talking rudely with a lot of insults, and they can’t control themselves and it becomes a habit. Leonard Eron, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan said that television alone is responsible for 10% of youth violence. Also, sexual content is really important, it initiate teens to sexual activities and sometimes it ends up with crucial consequences, like abortion. In a Study Conducted by RAND and published in the September 2004 issue of Pediatric, “Youths who watched more sexual content where more likely to initiate intercourse and progress to more advanced non coital sexual activities in the year following the beginning of the study”. Watching too much TV also have an impact on people’s social life. After seeing violent scene on TV, it starts to seem normal things to people, as if the real world was a movie. They become insensible to violence and those people start being passive and ignore other persons. They live in their own world. Even more, when at home, men or women would rather watch TV than spending time in family, which often leads to arguing and eventually divorce. This lack of communication with other people is essential as far as friendship is concerned. They don’t connect with the world anymore and while they are thinking that they were relaxing, they are actually stopping to live their life.

In a nutshell, Television, when misused, can have bad influences on people. Eating too much snacks may lead to obesity and being unhealthy. There are a lot of violent and mature scene, which affect teens’ way of life badly, and also watching too much TV make people to stop communicating with each other.

Work Cited Page

American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Public Education. “Media violence”. Pediatrics. 2001 Nov;108(5):1222-6.

Senate Committee on the Judiciary. “Children, violence, and the media: a report for parents and policy makers”. September 14, 1999. Accessed 14 June 2006. Available at: <http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/mediavio.htm>

Holmes, Gary. “Nielsen Reports Television Tuning Remains at Record Levels”. The Nielsen Company, 17 October 2007. 10 June 2008.
<http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?allRmCB=on&newSearch=yes&vgnextoid=13280e5b2cea5110VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD&searchBox=ratings>

Cited: Page American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Public Education. “Media violence”. Pediatrics. 2001 Nov;108(5):1222-6. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. “Children, violence, and the media: a report for parents and policy makers”. September 14, 1999. Accessed 14 June 2006. Available at: <http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/mediavio.htm> Holmes, Gary. “Nielsen Reports Television Tuning Remains at Record Levels”. The Nielsen Company, 17 October 2007. 10 June 2008. <http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?allRmCB=on&newSearch=yes&vgnextoid=13280e5b2cea5110VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD&searchBox=ratings>