The Influence of Television on Children

The Influence of Television on Children In Brown and Hood’s (2002) article “Television and Children”, written in addition order mode tells the influence of television on children’s behavior. They explained how children spend most of their time watching television than any other activity. They added that children learn a violent and aggressive behavior mostly from television drama and cartoons. They also mentioned that watching violence and aggressive behavior make children less sensitive to it. However, the children’s response to television programs is not always negative. They sometimes learn positive lessons. It all depends on the way violence is portrayed on television. The authors say that when a child watches aggressive act in cartoon, he will become aggressive, and will try to imitate the negative actions (pp.139-140). I have a personal experience that demonstrates the effect of television cartoons on children. It was proved that the more negative actions they watch in cartoons, the more aggressive they become in their real life. There are many incidents that happened with my sister, Norah during Feb. 2011, that shows the fact of the violence we see on television programs, and how it affects children’s behavior to become more aggressive and violent. The story began when I visited Norah’s house. I saw her son Aziz 5 year old watching television for a long time, and it seemed that violent cartoon is the only type that interests him. He hurt his little sister during commercial breaks! “Why did your son become more aggressive with his little sister?” I asked her. She told me, Aziz began watching cartoon called “Patman” that includes a lot of fighting and killing. He started to imitate what does he see and always hurt his little sister. “That was just the beginning” my sister said. One day Aziz tried to jump from the roof just like what “Patman” does. Luckily, Norah caught him in the last minute. That was the wakeup call for her, and now she seriously understands the dangerous effects of violent cartoon on children.
I think Brown and Hood’s article is very serious and an important topic to be discussed. They give many researches of television influence on children’s behavior in the U.S.A. In addition, I think there is a large dangerous effect of violent television programs, especially cartoons that contain a big number of violent behaviors. So, my advice to all mothers is to pay close attention to their children, to be more specific, they should pay attention to what kind of television programs their children watch. Parents are responsible to control television time.