Television is an important aspect of media at homes, across generations. With their ability to cater to the needs of all sections and its availability 24 hours a day, has resulted in almost everyone getting hooked to it for varied reasons and durations. The developments in technology have not only made televisions cheaper, but also the possibility of transmitting globally.
It is difficult to imagine a life without television today. However television is not without its drawbacks particularly with children. Apart from losing concentration on studies, violence adaptation is a major worry that television has on children. A home survey by Annenberg earlier showed that a child in the US spends about 25 hours per week on an average in front of the television (Miller, 1999).
This includes the use of VCR too. Spending more time with television results in lesser time with homework and social interaction, leading to poor school performance. Late night TV watching exhausts children and they cannot concentrate in school the next day. Television promotes negative and violent behavior in children through its programs.
Even programs aimed specifically for children involve violence. It has been estimated that an average child would watch about 8000 murders in TV before completing elementary school. Research at the University of Pennsylvania have revealed that on an average television shows for children contain about 20 violent acts every hour. It was noticed that children behaved differently after they have watched violent programs.
The university observed 100 pre school children before and after watching television shows. Some watched cartoons with many aggressive and violent acts while others watched programs without any violence. It was noticed that the children who watched violent programs began striking at playmates, arguing, bullying and disobeying (Abelard, 2008). Another notable affect that television violence has on children is that they gradually begin to perceive the world as a mean and dangerous place.
The Television Violence Monitoring Project, which studied the effects of TV violence on American children for three continuous years, found that 61% of all programs had some form of violence and only 4% of the violent programs had an anti violent theme. A notable feature of this violence is that nearly 75% of all violent scenes show no punishment or condemnation for the violence (NYVPRC, 2008). However there are also programs aimed at providing relevant academic skills to children. However children spend considerably less time watching programs dedicated to education like mathematics, problem solving, science etc.
, while they spend more time with non-educational programs like commercials and cartoons. Children must be encouraged to watch educational and beneficial programs, which are also entertaining. It is not that television has no good sides. A University of Michigan study advocates that TV enables children watch educational programs, learn about cultures while be entertained too (Cristolbal, 2006).
When guided by parents, television can be an effective media, which can actually help in the education and development of their children. Television can teach the kids things, which books do, like how to fix a room or how to live healthy. Everything has a good and bad aspect to it, and television is no exception. The society needs to ensure stricter controls on programs and advertisements, in line with research and other findings, to see that children grow healthy and wise.
Promoters of violent programs will however continue to haunt our television sets forever, but parents should ensure that it doesn’t impact their kids. Parental guidance is necessary to regulate television viewing among children so that television viewing is actually beneficial to them. More social awareness needs to be created among people to realize television’s potential than just negative effects on children. References Miller, Daphne.
(1999) Televisions effect’s on kids: It can be harmful. [Electronic Version] Downloaded on 26th March, 2009 fromhttp://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9908/20/kids.tv.effects/ Abelard (2008) Children and television violence [Electronic Version] Downloaded on 26th March, 2009 from http://www.abelard.org/tv/tv.php National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center (2008) Media violence facts and statistics [Electronic Version] Downloaded on 26th March, 2009 fromhttp://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/faq/mediaviolstats.asp Cristolbal (2006) Ditmas Times; TV is good for kids [Electronic Version] Downloaded on 26th March, 2009 from http://write.teachingmatters.org/node/521
