Mass Com Children And Television XP1

Children and Television: A lethal combination
Kah’leah Carnegie
Professor Chris Saunders
The College of the Bahamas
October 30, 2014
Abstract
A Television is said to be a box filled with a million images that pilots to an entire different world. Television has become one of the most increasingly important mass media around the world. Television is a way of sending and receiving moving images and sounds over wires or through the air by electrical impulses. The television main purpose is to entertain, teach, and influence a variety of people at all different age groups. Is children exposure to television indeed a lethal combination? Does Television promote aggressive behavior? Can stereotypes be formed from watching television? This paper is inclusive to answers of all the following questions along with many others. With exposure and access to all content of a different world never seen before, it may be debated whether children’s exposure to the medium television is essentially a lethal combination.
Keywords: children, television, lethal

Children and Television: A lethal combination
Brief History Of Television Television as what we know today, has completely transitioned compared to when it was first introduced in 1927. Long before its existence, families would gather around and listen to sitcoms on radios. Television has become an essential part of homes in the modern world that one may find it hard to imagine life without it. According to Mitchell Stephens in the article History of Television, the author explains before 1947 the number of U.S homes that had a television could be measured in the thousands, it wasn’t until the late 1990’s that at least 98 percent of U.S homes had television set that usually stayed on for seven hours a day. According to the article Cable Bahamas: Living up to promises, the author Philip Galanis states that before television was introduced to the Bahamas in the 1950’s and the 1960’s, radio broadcasts and movie theaters were the only source of being entertained and obtaining news. Television did not only replace radios for many, it changed Bahamian family life that had been centered around the transmission of Bahamian culture from one generation to another.
On September 27th, 1927, electronic television was successfully demonstrated in San Francisco by a 21 year old inventor by the name of Philo Taylor Fransworth in which lived in a house with no electricity until the age of 14. Philo Fransworth started by creating a system that could capture moving images that could be coded onto radio waves and transformed back to a picture on a screen. There were other inventions prior to Fransworth’s invention. Nevertheless, Fransworth’s invention which scanned images with a beam of electrons is the direct ancestor of modern television. (Stephens, 2001)

How Children Learn
Children are naturally curious of cause and effect and they gather information by observing and experiencing the world. Children display a remarkable intuition, and by observing the actions of other people they can conclude fundamental motivations, desires and preferences. Social Cognitive Theory is the idea that people learn through observation and applying it to mass media, especially television. The Social Cognitive Theory disputes that people replica the behaviors they see and that modeling happens in two ways. The first is imitation, the direct replication of an observed behavior. The example presented is the cartoon Tom and Jerry. After a child views the cartoon cat Tom hit cartoon mouse Jerry with a stick, that child might hit his sibling with a stick. The second form of modeling is identification, a special form in which observers do not copy exactly what they have seen but make more generalized but related response. The example presented is the child may have the same aggression toward that sibling however dump a pail of water rather than hit that individual with a stick. (Baran, New York) Observational learning can take place at any stage in life however it is even more valued during childhood, particularly as authority becomes important.
The prevalence of television in our lives and its power to form children’s learning cannot be denied. A recent study found that 83 percent of children under two in the United States of America, use screen media on a typical day and 66 percent of children age six months to six years watch television every day. Another study found that, commonly, children age six watch television for more than two hours a day. In 1999, The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children under two years of age should not watch television at all and children over two years of age should watch no more than one to two hours of high-quality educational programming. (Diehl & Toelle, 2008)
Below is a graph displaying the amount of time that is spent watching television. It is clear that people spend more

Content designed for pre-schooled children such as Sesame Street has been around for decades. Although it is marked as educational, there is little scientific information that these materials support learning in very young children. (4) A detailed examination of educational media for babies and toddlers concluded that, “there are no published studies on cognitive outcomes from any of the educational videos, computer software programs, or video game systems currently on the market for children ages 0–6 years.” (5)
The Negative Impact Of Television
Excessive television viewing among young children has been linked to negative impacts on early brain development, and lifelong physical health. Parenting is a major factor in determining television view points and educational patterns. Children's exposure to television during the preschool years is predictive of academic outcomes in future. Television affects children reading and language development. If reading is substituted in return for television viewing children may later have a delayed language development. Children who watch excessive television in future are less able to use their imagination. Too much TV can lead to an overload on the visual part of the brain, while depriving other parts of the brain. Areas of the brain responsible for creative thought and imagination are under used because watching television doesn’t require these skills. Adolescents whose parents allowed them to watch more educational programs when young are more likely to have higher grades, read more books, place greater value on achievement, and show more creativity. Conversely, adolescents who watched more violence or television for strictly entertainment when they were young, tend to have lower grades and do not as good in school.
Television can negatively affect children’s health, behavior and family life. Time spent watching television replaces time that could be spent interacting with others. This can negatively affect a child because caregiver’s social interaction is critical to a baby’s healthy development. Spending time watching television can take away time from healthy activities like active play outside with friends, eating dinner as a family, or reading. Television time also takes away from participating in sports, music, art or other activities that may stimulate the brain or require skillful practice. Children also obtain information about health from television and for the most part ads give unbalanced or incorrect information about fit lifestyles and healthy food choices. (Boyse, 2010) After-school television ads target children with ads for unhealthy foods and beverages inclusive of fast food and drinks that contain a very concentrated amount of sugar. (38) Watching an excessive amount of television can lead to childhood obesity and overweight. Children who watch television are more likely to be inactive and tend to snack while watching. (37) Therefore the more a child engage in watching television, the more inactive that child becomes and the more that same child will snack while watching television. While watching television, the metabolic rate appears to be lower than during rest [39]. This suggests that a person would burn fewer calories while watching television than when just sitting quietly, doing absolutely nothing. Also a regular sleep pattern is essentially an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Television viewing is associated with altered sleep patterns and sleep disorders among children and adolescents.
Kids are likely to learn things from television that parents don’t want them to learn. This explains the mass society theory, the idea that the media are corrupting influences that undermine the social order and that the average people are defenseless. Most things that children watch on television they believe are of reality. Children under age have difficulty telling the difference between reality and fantasy, this makes them more vulnerable to learning and adopting as reality the violence that is seen on television. Because of this phenomenon children are influenced by television and left defenseless due to the fact that they cannot differentiate between what is reality and what is fantasy. With this being said, repeated exposure to television violence makes children less sensitive towards its effects on victims and human suffering it causes. Watching unsafe behavior on television may increase children's risk-taking behavior. Kids have been injured trying to repeat dangerous stunts they have seen on television shows. (43) Most of the information that children obtain about sex is from television. Children are probably not learning what their parents would like them to learn about sex from television. Music videos, prime time shows and advertisements all contain an abundant amount of sexual content however very few usually promote contraception or safer sex. Most parents don't engage in conversation about sex and relationships to their children a most schools do not offer complete sex education programs. This is the reason children get much of their information about sex and relationships from television.
According to the article Television and Children, the author Kyla Boyse expresses that two thirds of all programming contains violence. The author emphasis that even ‘good guys’ beating up ‘bad guys’ sends the message to the children that are watching that violence is normal and accepted. Indeed children tend to want to be like the ‘good guys’ while they are playing. A fifteen year study by the university of Michigan researchers found that the link between childhood television violence viewing and aggressive and violent behaviors persists into adulthood. (42)
Television Initiates the Formation Of Stereotypes
The Cultivation theory is the idea that people’s ideas of themselves, their world, and their place in it is shaped and maintained primarily through television. (Freedman, 2002) Television constructs a reality of the world that, although possible inaccurate, becomes meaningful to us simply because we believe it to be true. We then base our judgments about and our actions in the world on this cultivated reality provided by television.
Television exercises its greatest power over those who do not hold strong opinions or who have no opinion or information about a particular topic or group of people. (Litcher, 2011) Young people have positive feelings about Televisions ethnic characters, and these associations may carry over into their images of real life groups. (11) Gender-biased and gender-stereotyped behaviors that children are exposed to when watching television do affect how they see male and female roles in our society. After repeatedly seeing stereotypes displayed on television children eventually accept them. The proposed audience for G-rated movies are children. G-rated movies are movies that are fit for a general audience. They do not contain any strong language, nudity, sex, or drug usage and violence is minimal. However in these movies whether they are animated or non-animated, stereotypes are displayed. Examples of stereotypes may include Person of non-color being displayed as dominant, characters of color are under-represented and are usually shown as sidekicks, comic relief, or bad guys and male characters of color are usually displayed as more aggressive and isolated than any other character. Thin women are unreasonably misrepresented on television. The heavier a female character, the more negative comments that are associated with her. (Boyse, 2010) It is rare to see Asians or Asian Americans on television, and when they are displayed on television, the diversity in Asian American culture is not shown. (28)
Opposing Views
Television is an inescapable portion of modern culture. Television can act as a catalyst to drive children to read and follow up on television programs by getting books on the same subjects or reading authors whose work was adapted for the programs. (Caron, 2009) Some television programs can educate, inform and inspire. Television can help introduce youth to classic Hollywood films and foreign movies that they might not otherwise see. (8) Also, Young People can be more aware of other cultures and people by watching news, current events and historical programming. Television can be more effective and informative than books or audiotapes. Cultural programming can open up the world of music and art for young people. These points are all true for positive television programming. However Two-thirds of all programming which is more than fifty percent, contains violence. (Boyse, 2010) Joseph Klapper’s idea coined the reinforcement theory states that media have no impact at all, it is in the direction of reinforcement. This idea cannot be applied to children. How can something be reinforced that was never there? For the most part children gather and learn most things that parents don’t want them to know from television.
What Parents Can Do
Parents who take an active role in creating rules, boundaries, and expectations for television use are more likely to have children who benefit from media time. (Diehl & Toelle, 2008) To limit the negative effects and maximize the positive effects of television for young children parents can identify and encourage their children to watch educational material and positive programs that will provide learning and opportunities. Keep television out children rooms. Children who have a television in their room watch much more television than those who do not, and viewing tends to be unsupervised. Families that set strict rules and expectations toward media have better control on the amount of media and the quality that children are exposed to. Parents should recognize that television is only one factor in shaping children's learning experiences. Parents should actively encourage learning in all phases of life. This includes through play, reading, telling stories, listening to music, and all of the every-day experiences where children interact with and learn about the world. Parents can treat television as privilege to be earned not a right. (How Tv Affects Your Child, 2000) Parents can establish and enforce family television viewing rules. An example may be only after the completion of chores and homework can the child then watch television.

Conclusion
Television has completely transitioned compared to when it was first introduced and it is indeed a lethal combination. Children gather information by observing and experiencing the world. Excessive television viewing among young children has been linked to negative impacts on early brain development, and lifelong physical health. Television can initiate the formation of stereotypes. Parenting is a major factor in determining television view points and educational patterns. Parents should think carefully about the role of television in the lives of their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Works cited
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Boyse, K. (2010, 09). University Of Michigan Health System. Retrieved 30 09, 2014, from http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv.htm
Caron, A. (2009). Retrieved 10 26, 2014, from Media Smarts: http://mediasmarts.ca/television/good-things-about-television
Diehl, D. C., & Toelle, S. C. (2008). Retrieved 09 30, 2014, from University Of Florida IFAS extention: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fy1074
Freedman, J. L. (2002). The Media Institute. Retrieved 09 28, 2014, from http://www.mediainstitute.org/PDFs/policyviews/Freedman-TelevisionViolence.pdf
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Litcher, R. S. (2011). Retrieved 10 24, 2014, from Center For Media Literacy: http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/does-tv-shape-ethnic-images
Stephens, M. (2001). History Of Television. Grolier Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09 28, 2014, from https://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/History%20of%20Television%20page.htm