Violence Essay, Research Paper

Effects of TV on Children

Essay submitted by Unknown

Sitting in school, little Jane sits anxiously watching the clock. The teacher is talking to

the class, but Jane just can’t wait to get home. When the bell finally rings, she runs

out of the classroom, and all the way home. After blasting in the house, she runs to

turn on the TV. Having nothing more exciting to do, Jane will sit in front of the

television until her mom pulls her away for dinner. This is an all to familiar scenario in

many American homes today. What many people don’t realize are the problems that can

develop from young children watching too much TV. Many emerging dilemmas are

resulting from this concern. When a young child with a maturing brain sits in front of

the TV for several hours every day, it can instigate loss of creativity, impatience, and

violence further along down the road.

The ability to be creative is an important factor in the development of a young child’s

mind. By sitting down and watching TV for a couple hours, the child is entertained, but

is also not thinking. Information in spoon-fed to them, so when it comes time to read a

book in school, some can have a hard time grasping ideas. They are so used to having

images flash before them to provide understanding; they have trouble moving their

eyes side to side to gather the information for themselves. With the TV in front of

them, supplying amusement, they may never stop to think that putting a puzzle

together, or reading a book could also be fun. They could actually become dependent

on this one source of fantasy, and never bother to create their own. As the child grows

older, it is less likely to put effort into playing with other kids, or taking up a hobby.

While losing creativity, the child can also gain impatience. By having all the stories and

facts plastered clear in front of them, they can easily loose interest sitting in a

classroom all day. Even during their favorite TV show, there is a brief change of pace in

the story line when a commercial comes on, which is about every seven minutes. Their

attention spans are being molded by this continuos interruption, causing them to loose

focus easily. Research has shown that teachers today are using many more multimedia

devices to capture the students attention. Being so used to seeing information

provided by the TV, they are more responsive to learning with it in school, and are

more likely to remember it. Many links are showing up in studies between Attention

Deficit Disorder (ADD), and watching too much television in elementary children. This

disorder is becoming more common in the classroom, where they have a hard time

concentrating.

Along with losing creativity and gaining impatience, the child is more apt to behave

violently. They can slowly learn as it is played repeatedly, that they can get what they

want by responding with violence. When they see a character shot, or beat someone

up so they can steal their car, they may catch on to the idea. They come to expect it

in the real world, and when they do not see it, the world becomes bland. The children

then may create the violence that their mind craves. A child may also see a villain on

TV, and try to test out his tactics to see if they really do work. In California, a

seven-year old boy sprinkled ground-up glass in into the stew his family was to eat for

dinner. When asked why he did it he replied “I wanted to see if it would be the same as

on TV.” In Alabama, a nine year old boy was caught putting rat poison on a box of

candy that he was going to give to his teacher due to the bad grades he received on

his report card. He responded by saying he got the idea form a TV show he watched

the night before. These are certainly startling examples of how television violence can

affect a child.

Is it surprising to many that statistics show television is the number one after school

activity for young children? On an average, kids from six to seventeen watch from

three to four hours of TV a day. By the time of graduation, it can add up to 15,000

hours of watching TV, compared to only 11,000 hours of being in school. Growing older,

it could result in lack of effort in work, communication problems, and even concepts of

reality. Control needs to be taken by parents to limit how much and what type of

programs their child is watching. It can definitely help develop the young minds to

expand their capabilities, stay focused and learn non-violent ways of living.