Television Being a Bad Influence

Arguments in favor of television being a bad influence. Television makes children violent and aggressive. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there is a consensus developing among members of the research community that violence on television does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the programs. Television discourages face-to-face interaction among children or families. Sitting passively in front of the television leads to weight gain, increasing the chances of diabetes in children and heart disease in adults.

Television programs model undesirable behavior such as drug and alcohol use or unhealthy relationships. Research indicates that students may be less able to engage in formal descriptions of events or objects than their peers in the past. Dr. Rosemary Sage of the University of Leicester's School of Education attributes this drop in verbal communication skills to an increase in television watching among youth at the expense of communication with their parents or other adults.

TV has been linked to many disorders in children point support. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no TV at all for children under the age of 2, and for older children, one to two hours a day of educational programming at most. Various studies have linked greater amounts of television viewing to all sorts of problems; among them attention deficit disorder, violent behavior, obesity, and poor performance in school and on standardized tests. Given that kids watch an average of around four hours of TV a day, the risks would seem to be awfully high.

Television makes children more violent and aggressive. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there is a consensus developing among members of the research community that violence on television does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the programs. violent images on television and in computer games can increase aggressive behavior among young children. Researchers have found that violent imagery in the media had a "substantial" short-term effect on children's arousal, thoughts and emotions. Kevin Browne and Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis, from the University of Birmingham, analyzed data from six North American studies, which looked at the effects of media violence on children. They found consistent evidence that young children who watched violent television, films and video games showed more aggressive play and behavior. The study, which is published in The Lancet journal, showed that the effect was "small but significant", and more relevant for boys.

Television discourages face-to-face interaction among children or families. If you are in front of the TV the whole day then how can you be interacting with your family and talking and stimulating your mind? TV makes people completely antisocial and closes them off from their family and society. Watching too much violence on TV at a young age may lead to antisocial behavior later on. A new study shows preschool boys who watched TV violence were more likely to develop antisocial behavior by ages 7 to 9 than those who watched nonviolent or educational television. But the same effect wasn't seen in girls. Researchers say the results are significant because antisocial and aggressive behavior among young children is associated with violent behavior in older children. In addition, they found that much of what was considered "children's television" programming actually contained a significant amount of violence.