The Effefcts Of Tv On Children Essay, Research Paper

Effects of TV on Children

Little Daniel is sitting in English watching the clock. Some guy is talking to the class but Daniel just can’t wait to get home. When the bell finally rings, he runs out of the classroom little a giggling little schoolgirl, running wee wee wee, all the way home. After getting home, he runs to turn on the TV. Having nothing more exciting to do, Daniel will sit in front of the television keeping him from doing his homework until his mom calls him for dinner. This is an all to familiar 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 arising problems 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 child’s mind. By sitting down and watching TV for a couple hours, the child is entertained but is also not thinking. Information in given to them while watching TV so when it comes time to read a book in school, some children can have a hard time learning these ideas because they are used to just hearing them on TV. They are so used to having images flash before them that they have trouble moving their eyes side to side to gather the information for themselves. With the TV in front of them 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 they will less likely put effort into playing with other kids or taking up a hobby.

While losing creativity, the child can also become impatient. By having all the stories and facts shown 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 show when a commercial comes on, which is about every seven minutes. Their attention spans are being built by this continuous interruption, which will cause them to loose focus easily. Research has shown that teachers today are using many more multimedia devices to capture the student s 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 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 becoming impatient, the child is more likely to behave violent. They can learn it as it is played repeatedly on TV, that they can get what they want by reacting with violence. When they see a character shot or beat someone up so they can steal the car they may catch on to the idea and they will expect it in the real world. The children then may create the violence that their mind sees on TV. A child may also see a villain on TV and try to be like him by doing what he does. In California, a seven-year old boy sprinkled ground-up glass 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 examples of how television violence can affect a child, and how screwed up America is…

Television is a resource that is not used to the full extent that it could be. Television programs that educate are limited and those that do educate are often on during the day when children are at school. Television stations should organize their programs so that the educational shows are on when children get home from school so that the children will be able to learn while enjoying themselves at home. Schools often use television as a way of educating students because on television they can demonstrate many things that can t be done in the classroom and often show things that cannot be experienced in the area where the school is located. This is an excellent use of television and teachers should be doing this in their classrooms because it offers many advantages to classroom teaching. 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 could result in lack of effort in work and communication problems. I beleive 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.

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