We Need Less Television and More Play

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We Need Less Television and More Play

In today’s world, society’s focus is not getting out in the environment and enjoying nature. The focus is television, cell phones, the internet, and any other means of technology available. Our society needs to stop indulging in technology and start enjoying nature again because too many people are glued to the television several hours a day, planning their day around usage of a computer and/ or their television shows, health concerns are on the rise for these constant viewers who don’t participate in other activities, and all of this absorption of the information age is separating us from nature. We are indeed an information economy, which has many good aspects to it, but we should not be shutting out nature from our lives.

The average child watches approximately 3-5 hours of television per day (Department of Education, University of Maine). Our two year olds are watching approximately 3 hours of television pre day! Why are they watching so much? What ever happened to going to the park, playing red rover- red rover, hopscotch, or even TV- tag? The answer lies in the parents of these children. There was a study done to show the reasons why parents do not limit the amount of television their children watch. The most commonly mentioned reasons for which parents are not limiting television are because they need to get work done, they do not want their children to get bored, and that television never hurt their brain so why would it hurt their child’s. The truth is, if television is watched enough it does hurt your child’s brain, impacting neurological development. Thinking skills, imagination, attention span, reading abilities, and speaking skills in a child decrease the more they wa...

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...on the brain. Going out in nature, playing games, and going places will allow our future children to develop and will give them the opportunities that they will not have if they spend their lives in front of the television.

WORKS CITED:

Anderson, Chris and Runciman, Lex. (1995). A forest of voices. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company.

Willow Computing (2000). LimiTV, Inc [Electronic version]. Retrieved March 29, 2004, from http://www.limitv.org/

Wellsource Incorporated (2003). Health plus: Watching too much television? [Electronic version]. Retrieved March 30, 2004 from http://vanderbiltowc.wellsource.com/dh/Content.asp?ID=907

American Psychological Association (2004). Public Affairs: Violence on television- What do children learn, what can parents do? [Electronic version]. Retrieved May 5, 2004 from http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/violence.html

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