The Influence of Television on Today’s Younger Generation
Television has an enormous influence on the younger population of today. With the explosion of technology and the 24/7 access to television, children are flooded on a daily basis with huge amounts of media. All the accessibility to television shows allows for children to see and learn things, which are not suitable or appropriate for their age, leading to immoral, inappropriate, aggressive and anti-social behavior. TV shows shape and mold young people in a lot of ways, creating thoughts and ideas that have a huge influence in their views and actions. Many times the opinions and attitudes shown on TV are very harmful to the development of children. Television is a major contributor in dispersing inappropriate material to our younger society. There is no doubt at all that television has changed the world and how we view it. With just the point and click of a button of a remote, the viewing possibilities on TV are endless. There are literally hundreds of cable channels to choose from with cartoons, sitcoms, dramas, news, reality shows and music videos filling the airwaves.
Children spend hours in front of the television every day. Instead of eating dinners around a table as a family, many children eat dinner in front of the television. TV is full of programs that depict risky behaviors as cool, fun, and exciting. Whether the child's preference is a cartoon, an action packed movie, a dramatic series, professional sports such as boxing, news, nature programs or a crime scene show, the detrimental effects of TV becomes greater every time they tune in to watch a TV show. Since children are visual learners and television is a powerful teacher, children watch their favorite charac...
... middle of paper ...
... even the social aspect of youth. TV is very influential to today’s youth and it can also be the most damaging to young developing minds. Watching television that has so much violence or immoral behavior on shows has become such an ordinary, everyday part of society that many people fail to realize the huge impact which it has on all aspects of young society. Behavior seen on television affects the way children act, the values they hold, and the way they perceive reality. These effects can result in the breaking down of relationships in our society. Family relationships, as well as respect for family relationships deteriorates. With the overall impact of the television becoming an increasing problem within the younger generation, a decrease in terms of respect in our society today can already be seen. Respect for self disintegrates along with respect for others.
Television is a distraction for children and can hurt their cognitive abilities if they watch too much because it is non interactive. In the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity Helena Duch and colleagues mentioned that the American Academy of Pediatrics advises, “parents avoid exposing children 2 and under to screen media, a nationally representative survey found that 68% of children under the age of 2 use screen media in a typical day, and that average screen time was 2.05 hours per day” (Dutch et al 2). Children live in a world full of screens, ranging from iPhones, TVs, to tablets and computers. Drastic brain development occurs during the ages of 1-3 and exposing them to too much screen time of any kind can have negative effects on them (Hopkins 27). Putting them in front of a screen also steals away from times they could be talking, playing, and interacting with their surroundings. Pediatrician Dr. Michael Rich claims that shows d...
In the essay "Why We Tuned Out" by Karen Springen she brings up many facts of how TV is bad for kids. She has many details explaining her topic and contains some good advice of how TV is bad for children. She claims that children who watch television more than 10 hours a week are likely to become overweight and are slow to learn in school. TV contains many events in our social life. It contains many educated channels, but some that arn't willing for kids to watch.
It may be hard to admit, but television has become an intricate part of our everyday lives. People children often find themselves sitting in front of the television screen for a longer period of time than before and this has evolved immensely over the past few years. In this article, “The Trouble with Television,” by the author Marie Winn, mentions that addiction of television is negative effects on children and families. It keeps the families from doing other things and it’s a hidden competitor for all other activities. Television takes place of play and on top of that kids who watch a lot of television grow uncivilized. Also, the author mentioned that televisions are less resourceful for children and have negative effects on children’s school achievement and on physical fitness. Although there are so many other types of addictions but the author Marie Winn’s points of argument of watching television is a serious addiction that our children and families have negative effects.
"How TV Affects Your Child." Kids Health - the Web's Most Visited Site about Children's
The author claims television also destroys a human relationship. During free time instead working our difference with conversing each other, we are absorbed by imaginary world of television. Therefor we fail to interact through the real world leading to the ' distortion of real life relationship.' Television gives an escape root for people who need to be spending time on relationships with their family as well as others. Because children have ' one way relationships ' with the television, they fail to fully develop their communication and social skills. This further intensifies the decline of the family relationships.
The entertainment that television is now portraying is not exactly what the younger society of America needs to be exposed to, but unfortunately in today's economy that is the only kind of entertainment that sells. There is so much unnecessary exposure to violence, aggressive behavior, and sexual acts now being broadcasted daily on television, movies, music, and even the news. The broadcasting systems are now targeting younger children and teens. The crime rates have skyrocketed due to delinquent juvenile behavior over the past ten years. The whole viewing society is now becoming very tolerant and at ease with sex and violence. Youth and children are picking up on these behaviors daily. Studies have shown that by the age of 18, the average American teen will have viewed around 200,000 acts of violence on television. The violence and sexual content that television and music are now portraying has negatively influenced younger children and teens to commit murder, exhibit aggressive behavior, and become tolerant of violence and sex.
After the invention of television by Philo Farnsworth in 1927, this is the most common thing that can be found in any household throughout the globe. But it has not as good reputation as it is expected to have in the houses because there is belief in every house that Television helps in making people lazy, fat and in the worst cases addicted. For example, girls are supposed to have the addiction to the TV series, children to the cartoons and boys to the sports programs. Generally if seen on the online blogs and magazines, fatness of the people is also related to the TV and serials. So there is a stereotype that watching television is bad habit. If any child is watching television then it might not be the best thing that their parents want to watch, because they want them to be productive. In addition to that, the contents presented in the television are also the major problem in this case. A Surgeon General's report last year concluded that 61% of all TV programming contains violence. That provides the stat that if a child spends 3 to 4 hours a day in television then he will see 8000 small screen murders (smith). It might help in the violent character of the child but this is not the all thing television does. If we see in detail the advantages of television has outnumbered the disadvantages and is the best medium of communication throughout the world. Though watching television might be considered to be bad and might have social taboos but it has more advantages than disadvantages and is one of the best scientific innovations done by human being. One scientific innovation has assisted a lot to keep up the growth and development of people from New York to Somalia and from Sydney to Haiti.
In “Television Harms Children”, Ann Vorisek White claims that the intellectual and cognitive development of children who frequently watch television is threatened. To support this claim, she points to the findings that “the more television children watch, the weaker their language skills and imaginations” (White, 2006). Before the brain fully matures around age 12, it is in the stage of rapid development. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) “recommends that children under the age of two not watch TV or videos, and that older children watch only one to two hours per day of nonviolent, educational TV” (White, 2006). A study from the AAP (as cited in White, 2006) found that the average American child watches four hours of television every day. Considering "expression and reasoning are not automatic" abilities, young children who routinely watch television eventually become "passive and nonverbal" to stimuli in their environment (White, 2006). Since the normality of curiosity and imaginations of young children are the foundation of how they learn, remaining passive for extended periods of time affects their intellectual and moral development.
Television has become a big part in children’s day-to-day lives especially in the 20th century. Children in this century rely on television to keep them entertained and educated instead of entertaining and educating themselves by participating in activities, which will teach them a lot more in life then the actual television. There is no doubt that children are most easily influenced by television because of the different content that they watch as well as the amount of time consumed watching TV. The television does have an emotional and intellectual development on children but this all depends on the content that they’re watching and the way that they absorb the information that the show is trying to send out. Different programs will portray
... for children. Children are exposed to 20,000 advertisements a year. The average child watches 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school. By the time children graduate from high school, those numbers more than doubles. Furthermore, television is shown to influence attitudes about race and gender. Pro-social and anti-social behaviors are influenced by television.
The effect of the media on young children is especially salient. Young children often learn how to act and behave from what they observe at home, from the adults and older peers they come in contact with, and from what they see on television.
Children in their adolescents years watch a great amount of TV each week and it is almost inevitable that they will start to be influenced by what they see on their television. They will see diffe...
Without a doubt, television is the central and principal form of communication in many people’s lives. This form is most often exposed to a child who instantly becomes accustomed to its presence. Children are televisions largest audience, as Morris shows, “Children aged two to five look at the TV tube on an average of 28.4 hours a week; those between the ages of six and eleven average 23.6 hours a week”. Television has played an important role in many children’s lives and its viewing has been a favorite activity for many of them. The effects of television on children have been disputed. Some people have said that viewing time has a negative impact on children. Other people, however, feel that the early educational television productions for children help tehm learn.
There are many facts that show how children are affected by television. The most obvious is the effects that television has on the brain. 'Television interferes with the development of intelligence, thinking skill and imagination.';(LimiTv) A huge element of thinking is taking from what you already know and deciding how it applies in different situation. School makes you do this, but television does not. Michael and Sheila Cole, sociologist, say that 'Children socialized to learn from television had lower than normal expectations about the amount of mental effort required to learn from written texts, and tended to read less and perform relatively poorly in school.';(Development of Children 24) Which means that it takes very little effort to follow a television show and kids are raised on television believe that it takes less effort to learn from television rather than books because they have been 'spoon-fed'; information by television. 'Opportunities for a child's imagination to develop are also denied by habitual viewing.'; (Neural Activity and the Growth of the Brain) Children need some unstructured time to allow imagination skills to form by thinking about a book or story, a conversation, or an event.
In United States, “Children watch 4 hours of television every day, 28 hours a week and, sometimes, 10 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Before their 18th birthday, children may view 25,000 hours of television” (Ni Chang 85). Nowadays, technology has been developed and used in many different ways. Many children spend large amount of time on IPad, smart phone, and computer. Clearly, television has played an important role in most of the younger age group’s life. As a parent, one of the biggest concerns about the influence that television has on the children is that they tend to become aggressive while they watch a lot of violent program. Communicating and engaging with one and other is limited because television has destroyed communication among family and removed children from the social interaction. Moreover, watching a lot of TV also contributes child obesity. Overall, television is harmful for children in their early development because it is not only going to delay their brain development, but also increase their aggressive behavior, and cause child obesity in a long term period.