The Relationship between Children and Television
The role of the media in childhood obesity and other eating disorders
has been criticised in the past few years. This has led me to research
into the relationship between children and television focusing on my
hypothesis ‘ Advertising aimed at children shapes their ideas in a
negative way’. My target audience for my research is 6 to 10 year olds
and research methods I have used include a questionnaire, textual
analysis, books, television programmes and the Internet.
My research is mostly focused on obesity in children and the role of
the media in this problem. Since 1980 the proportion of overweight
children ages 6-11 in the UK has tripled and about 15% of 6 to 19 year
olds are overweight. During the same period in which this proportion
increased, there was also an increase in media targeted at children (www.media-awareness.ca).
This fact has resulted in some people blaming the media for childhood
obesity. Researchers have hypothesized ways that advertisements may
contribute to obesity. One of the ways is the food advertisements
children are exposed to on TV influence them to make unhealthy food
choices. A study by Kotz, K et al, showed that during Saturday
morning children’s programmes, there are approximately 8 food adverts
per hour. However, I repeated this study and found there were now 11
food adverts per hour on terrestrial TV on a Saturday morning, which
could be worked out as one food advertisement being shown every five
minutes. I believe television adverts can influence a child’s
purchases as well as their families, and because of this influence, it
results in children making unhealthy food choices, and therefore
becoming overweight and obese. Although ultimately, it is the parents
who make the purchases, studies have demonstrated that from a very
young age, children influence their parent’s consumer behaviour.
Kids represent an important demographic to marketers because they have
their own purchasing power, they influence their parents' buying
decisions and they're the adult consumers of the future. In the 1980s,
Does watching television make you smarter? Television shows are recurring television programs in the form of episodes and series. My own view is that the television show being watched is picked by whosoever is watching it. Different people watch television shows from different perspectives. It is their ability to decode the information being passed through the show, and understand it, that determines the type of television show they will like to watch. Television shows have a continuous effect on the adolescents, but the positive outweighs the negative.
Drive-by shootings and school massacres are just two of the many violent past-times of today’s youth. Is television a contributor to this insidious erosion of children's respect for life? Much research that has been done in an attempt to answer this question. The majority of the findings are very similar in content, and the results are grim. Television violence has been shown to cause four major changes in children's behavior: "Increasing aggressiveness and anti-social behavior, increasing their fear of becoming victims, making them less sensitive to violence and to victims of violence, and increasing their appetite for more violence in entertainment and in real life." (AAP Committee) Television is causing a change in America's children, and it is not a change for the better.
The Effects of Children Having TV's In Their Bedrooms Ideas: They won’t work – isolation – stay up late –watch the wrong films – violence – antisocial – obesity – they risk dangerous - strain eyes – they get ideas off nasty programs – it is noisy – especially at night – they may see nothing else in life. T.V. Kills!!! …Relationships. And you thought there was little harm in buying them that little 14” screen last Christmas. Of course they’d start watching it now and again, perhaps watching some violent action thriller, ghastly murderous films, every night.
Consistently, everywhere, in this century there seems to be some form of a TV screen. These screens appear in restaurants, schools, at work, at home, and quite possibly more. What is forgotten in society is how that screen may affect the lives of the children in this modern world. When children are constantly watching a television screen there may be consequences to their health and education. Most parents do not have the ability to control what is shown on TV. Many programs disagreeably display marathons after school and during holidays. Supposedly, adult shows are only showed late at night, but with movies becoming more and more explicit, even bed time can’t stop the most determined child. Children’s problems in education and health are a direct result of the amount of TV watched.
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.
During the first two years of an infant’s life, their sensorimotor attributes are significant in cognitive developments (Berk, 2011). While still adapting to the world itself, the exposure of television might be too difficult for babies to digest all at once as each scene goes from five to eight seconds (Pantley, 2004). Ironically, it was noted that in the United States, approximately 74 percent of children under the age of twenty four months watch television (Rideout, Vandewater, & Wartella, 2003). Many of the learning programs available to the youth, such as Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues are intended for children between the ages of two and six, coincidentally the same age frame of the preoperational stage of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. This stage emphasizes the use of symbols to represent their earlier sensorimotor skills, which is why nonverbal communication is critical and consistently used in these learning television programs (Berk, 2011).
UKYouth, 2014. Statistics about Yound People in the UK. [Online] Available at: http://www.ukyouth.org/stories/item/292-statistics-about-young-people-in-the-uk.html#.U0vPpK1dWH8 [Accessed 14 April 2014].
The Effect of Television Violence on Children Television can be a powerful influence in developing value systems and shaping behavior; The violence that children are constantly subjected to on television can have very harmful affects if not monitored carefully. More and more often parents are using television as a means of entertaining their children when they are unable to, and the amount of television that children are watching is a growing concern in our society. While a large part of the concern is the quantity of television that young people are viewing, a more pressing issue is the quality that is offered to them. While cartoons may seem to be harmless and humorous, that is not always the case. A good portion of the violence that is on television is captured in Saturday morning cartoons, when children are most likely to be captivated by them.
During the 20th century, the literacy rate in America has begun to fall at an alarming rate. A factor contributing to the problems in the literacy rate includes children’s exposure to television which has resulted in a shortened attention span during other activities. Today, children are less active because of technology such as television and video gaming and, as a result more children are suffering from obesity.
Elliott, J. (2008) ‘Fifty years of change in British Society’ in J. Elliott & R. Vaitilingham (eds) Now We are 50: key findings from the National Child Development Study CLS/IOE/ESRC.
would say "how can a cartoon about a man hunting affect a child?" At first it
Our generation has been raised in a technological advanced world and there has been definite controversy over many of these innovations that this new culture has brought. An innovation that has troubled the youth of America for many years is television. Although there is no certainty to eliminate this 'plug-in drug,'; there are many ways to control and monitor your television as a parent.
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.
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.
Benefits of watching television at the young age would be that children’s social skill, emotional skill and creativity can be improved by watching the talk shows; it is proved by a study. For example, Children can learn how to communicate with other people and how to react properly when they are asked to response. In addition, TV shows such as C.S.I Miami, Criminal Minds and Bones can teach children how to think logically and stragically. Although books can transfer the knowledge to the young generations, but it has limitations that certain facial expressions and body languages cannot be transferred by few words. Furthermore, the beautiful images of the nature on the tv screen can let the children to take a long travel from their home to the deep in the ocean, top of Mt.Everest or middle of Sahara the dessert.