Effects of television on children

The Effects of Television on Children
Raed Zeabi
12 B Ms. Gina Udrea
Sharjah American International School - Dubai

Abstract
Every day for the few decades; children have been subjected to the harmful messages of advertisers on television. There is some discussion in the literary works over the years at which adolescent children can distinguish television broadcasts from programs, and when they can conjure up and want what they lay their eyes on and when they are able to figure out that the advertiser’s goal is to sell a manufactured product. Resolution of the dispute has been hindered by methodological difficulties and models which fail to fully apprehend and figure out children’s acknowledgments to advertisements. This research uses a book and ecologically accurate method of searching how toy advertising act on children by studying their demands sent to Santa Claus, monitoring game commercials and obtaining television viewing data. Eighty children aged from 5 to 7 years, who had set forth the messages to Father Christmas, were consulting with looking upon the extent and quality of their television viewing. Reports and related data were also analyzed for 16 nursery school kids, aged 4 to 5 years, using survey replies from their parents. Overall, kids who observed more commercial television were found to call for a larger number of things from Santa Claus. These kids also demanded more branded items than kids who watched less. Without Regard To, the children’s demands did not agree significantly with the most every now and then advertised game merchandise on television during the build up to Christmas. An accurate relationship was founded between watching television solely and number of demands.

The Effects of Television on Children

Television was invented eighty five years ago by a farm boy named Philo by mistake, now it’s one of the main sources of entertainment, education and problems worldwide. At many different ages, kids observe and understand television in many different ways. In broad, it depends on their consideration and attention, the method they use to help process information and data, their attentiveness to that specific information, and, of course, their own experiences in life itself.
Television, movies, series and advertising can affect our society significally and particularly our children. The huge amount of impact that’s caused by different aspects such as how many kids watches television and whether alone or with adults, as well as whether parents discuss what they see on television with their children.
Children’s age and personality are also very important factors that help influence the amount of television impact. Television has both positive and negative influences on children. Television has brought many changes to the way children spend their free time. While some of these changes have been good and beneficial, others have had a harmful effect. Thus, the job of this paper is to investigate the positive and negative effects of television on our children who in the course of time will be our future generations.

Television has an enormous impact on how children see the world in general. Kids waste more time watching TV than they spend on their school work. Kids and teens between 8 and 18 spend at least 4 hours a day in front a television screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer (outside school work) and playing video games (“Kaiser Family Foundation”).
Television viewing takes away the time a kid needs to develop very important skills like his own native language, social skills, imagination and most importantly creativity. School kids who watch too much television tend to work less on their homework. When children do homework with a TV in the background, they tend to absorb little information and fewer skills (“Parenting early years”). According to language and speech expert Dr. Sally Ward, 20 years of research and commitment show that children who are harassed by background television noises in their houses have problems paying attention to voices and calls when there is also a background noise.
Television viewing takes away time from writing and improving reading skills through practice (“Psychology Today Magazine”). Children watching cartoons and series and entertainment television during pre-school years have lower pre-reading skills at age 5. Kids who tend to watch entertainment television are also less likely to read books and other types of media (“Parenting Early Years”).

Television has become a huge part of a child’s life for the past few decades, and there is an argue that there is a link between a kid’s abnormal or aggressive behavior and television violence. Eighty percent of television programs include violence. In addition, it is important that children spending their leisure time in watching television should be controlled by the parents (Judith and Lawrence, 2004). TV violence does not just affect a child’s adolescence; it also affects his or her adulthood. It also can destroy a kid’s mind; the effects can be long lasting and ceaseless. Many psychologists feel that the continuous disclosure to television violence might unnaturally accelerate the impact of the adult world on the child leading him or her to early matureness. As the kid matures into a grown up, he can become frightened, have a greater mistrust towards others, a shallow oncoming to adult problems, and even the unwillingness to become an adult (Judith and Lawrence, 2004). Television includes many acts of violence and destruction not just in violent movies, but also in night news, cartoons and stand up comedies. Studies taken show that television violence makes children less sensitive, cruel, cold hearted, rude, lacking consideration for other and more aggressive. Watching violence on television reduces the sensibility of kids to real demeanor of vehemence. Other studies connect newspapers and TV publicity of suicides to a high risk of suicide that can be committed by children (TV’s harmful effects of kids).

In many diverse ways video vehemence can turn into actual violence. As interpreted atop, when kids observe a bit too much television violence the world becomes bland in comparison. Children need to create violence to keep them contented (Erica and George, 2010).
Also kids like to imitate fictional and non-fictional characters on television and find it fun. Kids also love to portray models on television and movies because the ideas that are shown to him are more alluring to the spectator than the ones he can think up himself (“Psychology Today Magazine”). Fictional characters are being imitated widely around the globe like for example power rangers and Ben 10 which children cannot seem to get enough of. Television violence effects are mostly seen and apparent in big cities; aggressive behavior was more admissible in the big cities as long as the child’s popularity was not hindered by his or her aggression (Judith and Lawrence, 2004). In the major cities, violence, felonies and crimes are unavoidable and expected therefore is left unchecked. Many researches were conducted into the topic of children and television violence and in the end pointed and lead to the same direction. There is an indisputable relationship between aggression and television violence. The outcome was acquired in a survey of London schoolchildren in 1975. Greensburg found a significant connection between the viewing of violence and aggression (Erica and George, 2010).

In this area the government has made many researches. An experiment was conducted where kids were left alone in a room with a videotape monitoring other kids playing and having fun. Kids who had just seen commercial vehemence accepted many superior levels of aggression than other kids. After quite some time, things got out of hand “and progressive mutilation began to take place”. The results were published in a report. Sergon Generals report found some” preliminary indications of a causal relationship between aggression and television viewing conduct in kids“(Psychology Today Magazine).
During our time it is noticed and observed that extremely coarse and rude programs on television standardize high aggressiveness, shortage of consideration of others, shortage of politeness and respect and public coarseness. All such behavior without doubt influences the conduct of kids in our community. In other researches among United States kids, it was discovered that violence, academic problems, unpopularity with peer and aggression feed off each other. This encourages vehemence behavior in the kids (Television’s Impact on Kids).
The combination of continued Television watching and aggression lead to low scholastic standings as well as unpopularity. All these can easily cause more aggression and malicious cycles to begin spinning (Television’s Impact on Kids). Viewing some programs may cause irresponsible sexual behavior in kids (“Psychology Today Magazine”). Pictures of hypersexual behavior, accidental sexual clashes without any common consequences, made use of programs for example such as BBC’s “Are You Hot OR NOT?” and sex exploitation in advertising may cause negative consequences for kids. Such movies, programs and TV shows cause very young people to have early sexual relation. Such sexual behavior becomes normal for many young kids with time, though many of them may be a bit mentally and physically traumatized by early sexual issues.
In spite the fact that telly can be a very strong method of educating kids about the hazards and liability of sexual behavior, such issues as sexually transmitted infections like AIDS and HIV and unwanted pregnancy are rarely debated in programs with genital content (“Television’s Impact on Kids”).
Research states that kids who spend more time on television are inclined to think that women and men have particular roles in our community (TV’s harmful effects on kids). It is apparent that TV usually shows women as weak and obedient in collation with some men who are usually described as dominating and rigid (TV’s harmful effects on kids). It may provide kids with a full comprehension of what they are awaited in the near future.
Impact on self-image, specifically for teenagers, is crucial and well documented. The negative consequences caused by television over the last 10 years in regard of self-image are high increases in bulimia, depression, self-mutilation, eating disorders, and anorexia Watching too much television of any kind has evident psychological and physiological negative outcomes on kids. In Biology it is known as the «couch potato» syndrome. A lot of studies show that even mild television content reduces imagination and creativity of kids, which in return increases obesity, physical activity, and laziness. In supplement, it leads to inferior grades in school, reduced ability to manage stress and conflict, and offensive behavior in connection with peers. And for your information, obesity in childhood can be highly encouraged by junk food advertised on television to children.
Violent shows and late-TV watching has been known to be associated with sleep problems in kids. The emotional stress caused from too much night shows prevent kids from dreaming and may eventually result in nightmares. In supplement, incorrect samples of sleep during the night can easily push kids to be less alert within the day; also advancing poor performance in school (“Television’s Impact on Kids”). It is very important to know that too much television watching may have a bad impact on academic and learning execution of kids (“Television’s Impact on Kids”). Especially it is apparent if the time of television viewing replaces healthy mental and physical exercises. Most part of children’ free time must be spent in such activities as exploring nature, playing music and sports, and reading (“Television’s Impact on Kids”). Besides, the time of TV watching significantly cut back contact with family and companions (Judith and Lawrence, 2004). It is important to take into account the impact of commercialism. There are a number of manipulative commercial messages on television and even at school almost every day. Companies aspire to manipulate kids and with this they tend to hire psychologists to help influence kids. This is called the «art of winemaking. » The redundant number of commercial messages has produced a chronic anxiety in teenagers, and many psychologists bear in mind that these messages have raised depressions in kids. The other invalidating effect is that advertising on television raises a claim to acquire something like for example toys.
Quite A few studies declare that parents carry on a primary role in social learning of their kids, but if the parent views are not discussed with their children, the medium may instruct and have an impact on them by absence (“Impact of media use on children and youth”). An example in an account from the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Children and Television, it was decided that:
“Television watching promotes an attraction toward vehemence, an apathy when real vehemence is seen, passive learning, provides unrealistic messages regarding substance abuse (drugs, alcohol, and tobacco), and also encourages the use of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, and by delivering an unrealistic way of problem-solving and/or dispute resolution and it is linked with obesity because of «snacks with high calories» pulmonary consumption” (“Television’s Impact on Kids”).

Some specialists, however, believe that television is not all that evil. They restrict though that watching television can be good if it is done in balance, and if the program being viewed is chosen some television shows can inform, inspire and educate. It can be more useful than audiotapes and books in teaching your child about methods like how to bake a cake or how to plant a plant. Studies show that children who view non-violent and educational children’ shows do better at reading, writing and math examinations than those who do not follow these programs. Kids who watch informative and educational presentations as preschoolers tend to view more educational and informative presentations when they get older. They deal with television effectively as a complement to school learning. On the other hand, children who view more entertainment programs tend to view fewer educational programs as they grow older (“Television’s Impact on Kids”). Kindergarteners who watch educational programs tend to have superior grades, value their studies more and tend to be more aggressive before and after they reach high school, according to a short-term study (“Television’s Impact on Kids”). Finally, scientists from the University of Siena found out that children experience a painkilling, soothing result by watching cartoons. So there is no harm in watching a little entertainment television here and there, and can be a source of relaxation for children who are in pain or stressed.

Conclusion In summary, the viewing and watching of television causes an important impact on the behavior and development of children of all ages. The Television set may have both negative and positive for children of all ages, and many researches have paid peculiar regard to the television percussion on our community and, in particular, our children. Today there is an extraordinary mission to stop the negative impact of television on kids. It is clear that quality-aligned programming for kids must be produced in the approaching future. Furthermore, speaking to kids at their homes with their families together and in school with their instructors about their favorite programs and many other popular programs and films can help kids get a better understanding of things on television and on the world itself. Thus, parents are the greatest impact on the lives of their kids and as their duty must control the state and try to manage their television view. Since we will never be able to convince the mass-media to narrow down advancing sex and vehemence, especially, on television, we can aspire to comply with what our children are subjected and handle them and talk with them about the programs they pay attention to, especially if they are with negative content.

Research Sites
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