Effects of Television on Children

Television is the main if not most influential medium in today’s modern society. Television began to expand in the 1950’s. It is impossible to simply say that television is good or simply turning the other direction and say it is bad for children. Television contains good as well as bad information in which it transmits to our children. Watching TV is one of the most important hobbies in the lives of a children or an adolescent. Practically in all the homes, regardless of the social level, a television is always present in which it replaces the maternal presence sometimes. The television plays the role of an electronic nanny that is accessible to most children. There is no disagreement about the fact that television can entertain, inform and accompany the child or adolescent, but it can also exert undesirable influences amongst them.

The time children and adolescent spend on television is deducted from many important activities, such as school work, reading, games, interaction with their family and their social development. In the relationship between television and children, children’s learning also exists. But the question is what kind of learning is television teaching our children? And what is the effect that causes on them? There are many unanswered questions that still torture some of us to this present day in relation to television viewing and its effects on children.

According to the Britannica Encyclopedia Company Merriam- Webster, television is clearly defined as:

An electronic system of transmitting transient images of fixed or moving objects together with sound over a wire or through space by apparatus that converts light and sound into electrical waves and reconverts them into visible light rays and audible sound...

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...surely does provide interesting and important information as well as unusual and unnecessary. Television may construct children’s knowledge as well as it can destroy it.

Works Cited

Anderson, Daniel R., and Reed Larson. Early childhood television viewing and adolescent behavior: the recontact study. Boston, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Gunter, Barrie, and Jill L. McAleer. Children and television. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1997.

Merriam-Webster. "television." Merriam-Webster. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/television (accessed February 18, 2014).

Schramm, Wilbur. Television in the lives of our children. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961.

Zuckerman, Diana M., Dorothy G. Singer, and Jerome L. Singer. "Television Viewing, Children's Reading, and Related Classroom Behavior." Journal of Communication 30, no. 1 (1980): 166-174.