how does tv viewing effect children?

Question

i have a debate on this topic,so it would be nice if the contents are in points.

Answer 1

Didn't pick a complex question, did ya! The effect of television on children is clear: kids see advertising directed at them - for this particular breakfast cereal, that particular toy, or a newly-named candy or soda - and the kids bug the heck out of their parents until one of the parents buys the stuff. Any television advertising executive will tell ya - it's very successful - to the tune of millions of dollars in profits every year. They can show ya the ledgers that prove it. Given that, how could anyone claim that other aspects of television viewing - as in violence and in the degraded treatment of females - does not influence children in directions that may not be good for them or for society? An on-line search under the topic "behavioral sciences" ought to provide you with the titles and some synopses of professional studies of the link between violent television and video games and an increase in violence committed by younger people. You don't need to read a whole truckload of textbooks cover to cover to get enough information for your debate, the synopses, along with titles and names of researchers, will give you enough to respond with when someone demands "prove it".
Good luck. Violent television does lead young people to violent behavior - all you need to do is find written evidence to prove that point - and I've shown you how to find it!

Answer 2

Most pll think tv is wrong for kids because they constantly stare at it all day long and their brain loses brain cells but thats not true. You can learn so much on tv than you can on a book. I learned so many things that are for facts and are true on tv. Yeah, you'll proably get bad eyesight tho, i guess thats one reason why parents dont like it when kids watch tv.

But other than that, you can too learn on tv. So it really isnt a bad education, but watch how much tv you watch because if you watch it too much a day, your eyes get sore and wek by the minute. The bad benefits of watching tv are, glasses, brain cells, not getting out and socolizing with others, and a lot more.

Answer 3

A great deal is known about children and television, because there have been thousands of studies on the subject. Researchers have studied how TV affects kids' sleep, weight, grades, behavior, and more. It' s worth looking at what the research says when deciding how to manage television in your family.
Spending time watching TV can take time away from healthy activities like active play outside with friends, eating dinner together as a family, or reading. TV time also takes away from participating in sports, music, art or other activities that require practice to become skillful.
TV viewing starts earlier than other forms of media—often beginning before age two. In recent years, TV, video and DVD programs geared to babies and toddlers have come on the market—and now even a cable channel for babies. We don' t know yet what effect TV-viewing by babies may have on their development. We do know that time spent watching TV replaces time spent interacting with caregivers and other children. Social interaction is critical to a baby' s healthy development.
How big a presence is TV in kids' lives?

On average, kids spend nearly 4 hours a day watching television, DVDs and videos [1].
68% of 8- to 18-year-olds have a TV in their bedroom; 54% have a DVD/VCR player, 37% have cable/satellite TV, and 20% have premium channels [2].
In 63% of households, the TV is "usually" on during meals [3].
In 53% of households of 7th- to 12th-graders, there are no rules about TV watching [4].
In 51% of households, the TV is on "most" of the time [5].
Kids with a TV in their bedroom spend an average of almost 1.5 hours more per day watching TV than kids without a TV in the bedroom.
Many parents encourage tots to watch TV.
Find out more about TV in the lives of children ages zero to six.
As you can see, if your child is typical, TV is playing a very big role in their life. Here are some key research findings to keep in mind as you decide what kind of role you want TV to play in your family:

http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourchild/tv.htm

Answer 4

My 2 1/2 year-old son has watched Playhouse Disney, PBS, and PBS Sprout since before he was a year old. He can count to ten. He speaks very clearly, and in complete sentences. He knows his colors, he knows a lot of different animals. I could keep going on about how smart my son is, but I think you get the idea.

I emphasize that we do not watch crap like Jerry Springer or Oprah.

Answer 5

tv desensitizes people, especially children because they see images of violence and have no sensitivity to it. Therefore they act out the images on other children and don't realize the affect. Unless of course parents tell their children the consequences of their actions. take for example tom and Jerry the cartoon. It is pretty violent. kids see those images and have no remorse for the violence they see.

Answer 6

reading is way better the book continues u thinking and also you get more detail in what people are thinking and you get more imagination

Answer 7

Reading the book instead of watching the movie is the best way to see what the writer planned. Reading uses your creativity, hones your reading skills, and can better your vocabulary

Answer 8

Many parents, providers, and educators are expressing a concern about the amount of television and the type of programming to which children are being exposed. The Department of Education states that children in the United States watch an average of three to five hours of television every day. Studies show that too much television viewing can have adverse affects, such as more violent and aggressive behavior, poor school performance, obesity, early sexual activity, and drug or alcohol use.

Children aren’t engaging in the activities they need to help them develop their bodies and brains when they watch television. The Parents as Teachers National Center says that young children need to “explore, move, manipulate, smell, touch and repeat as they learn. Studies have found that watching television does not increase attention, promote social skills, or foster creative play.”

The Department of Education states that children in the United States watch an average of three to five hours of television every day.

For older children, it is important to play, read, do homework, and talk with other children and adults for healthy development, according to the Department of Education. Children who watch too much TV have less time for these activities, which are so important for healthy development.

Language Development

The Department of Education states that language skills are best developed through reading and interactions with others in conversation and play. Excessive television watching can impede this development. Hours spent watching TV make risk-taking and social relationships difficult for many children.

Children as Couch Potatoes

The problem of obesity has risen, and television watching consumes only a few more calories than sleeping. Children who watch too much television don’t get as much physical activity and don’t explore new activities, according to the Family Education Network. Eating too much junk food and watching too much television are two major causes for obesity. Do we want to promote these behaviors at young ages?

Advertising

According to J. Van Evra, author of Television and Child Development, young children are particularly vulnerable to the influence of commercial advertising. They do not have the capacity to evaluate it critically, and as a result parents are pressured to buy products such as cereal and toys.

What Are Children Watching?

Violence in the media, television programming, video games and movies are a growing concern. According to Carla Kalin, M. S., statistics indicate that the typical American child will be exposed to 12,000 violent acts on television a year. The American Psychological Association Help Center reveals that children’s TV programming alone contains about 20 violent acts an hour.

Children are imitators and those who watch violent shows are more likely to display aggressive behavior. They are more likely to “strike out at playmates, argue, and disobey authority” according to the American Psychological Association Help Center. The Parents as Teachers National Center suggests that violent television programming teaches children that violence is an acceptable way to solve problems.

According to the Parents as Teachers National Center, the toddler and preschool years are an important time for emotional development, as well as a time when fears increase, and many children do not have the capacity to distinguish reality from fantasy. Watching a violent act on TV may be very disturbing to a toddler. Children who watch shows with violent content have more anxiety about the world around them, according to the Parents as Teachers National Center.

The American Psychological Association Help Center indicates that there are three types of harmful effects associated with viewing violence. They are:

Learning aggressive behaviors and attitudes
Becoming desensitized to real world violence
Developing a fear of being victimized


Is All Television Bad?

The Research Center for Families and Children indicates that moderate television watching with discretion in program viewing can be somewhat beneficial for school age children. Van Evra is in agreement. Both indicate that those children who watched a moderate amount of TV performed better academically than those children who excessively watched television or those children who did not watch television at all.

Karen Jaffe, from the Family Education Network, has suggested that some contemporary shows such as “Blue’s Clues,” “Bear in the Big Blue House,” and “Big Bag” can be educational and promote prosocial behavior. The Research Center for Families and Children states that television, if properly used in moderation, can stimulate a child’s education and creativity.

Answer 9

I am rather interested in this subject matter as well. I will give you a few sites where perhaps your can form your own opinion, taking a few segments out and discuss them briefly.

If you want a better idea about generalised effect of media on the masses, I would suggest readings from Jean Baudrillard - he is a philosopher who is quite concerned about media effect on the masses, or the lack thereof. The loss of significance through the banality of media. It is actually quite debatable, and too long to explain in a yahoo answer.

A good description of media and the masses from Jean Baudrillard's perspective can be seen in the following wikipedia excerpt from the Jean Baudrillard lead page.

"Baudrillard came to characterise the present age — following on from Ludwig Feuerbach and Guy Debord — as one of 'hyperreality' where the real has come to be effaced or superseded by the signs of its existence. Such an assertion — the one for which Baudrillard has drawn most and his heaviest criticism — is typical of Baudrillard's "fatal strategy" of attempting to push his theories of society beyond themselves, so to speak. Rather than saying, for instance, that our hysteria surrounding pedophilia is such that we no longer really understand what childhood is anymore, Baudrillard argued that "the Child no longer exists".[4] Similarly, rather than arguing — in a similar manner to Susan Sontag in her book On Photography — that the notion of reality has been complicated by the profusion of images of it, Baudrillard came to assert: "the real no longer exists"."

Thus to say, as is my stance, tv viewing does not effect children directly other than to remove them from reality into a state of hyperreality - where they are no longer able to tell the difference between the so-called reality of television and the world around them. This is why we go to theme parks - to escape "reality" - but the world in which we live is no longer real - it is culturally and in a sense chronologically removed from the sequence of history.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html - This is a copy of his essay on the subject.


Another interesting way to think about this this is by its effect on ego, its way of making a child see or believe him/herself to be. Here is an excerpt from the website http://www.maricarmenmartinez.com/mulvey.html . It is an outline and discussion of Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

"For Mulvey, this encounter of the child with its image is the matrix of the imaginary, that is to say, of all the mental images and representations we will form. But at the very core of that which allows us to form images to interpret the world, there is a process of recognition and misrecognition of ourselves. This is a moment in which there is a collision between what we see and the way we see ourselves. Previous to the recognition of his/herself in the mirror the child was fascinated by the mother's face and his surroundings but had no clear self-awareness. there is both joy and despair in the recognition of our individuality, joy because, we discover ourselves, despair, because we are severed from our attachment (engulfment) to our surroundings. By the same token, the screen works as a mirror for us. It probably plays with that primeval sense of joy of individuality and despair of separation of the moment of image recognition. While watching the screen we simultaneously lose the ego while we reinforce our ego. Also, in the persona of stars and the star system in general function to produce ego ideals.

There are, then, two contradictory aspects in the act of deriving pleasure from the screen: 1.the scopophilia aspect or the act of deriving pleasure from looking at another person as an object of sexual stimulation, 2. the narcissistic identification with the image in the screen. Active scopophilia implies a separation from the erotic object on the screen, narcissistic identification demands identification with the object on the screen through the spectator's fascination with the recognition of his/her likeness. Active scopophila derives from sexual instinct, narcissistic identification with ego libido or sexual wants and processes associated to the ego."

I can see by now that you have had other people copy and paste sites which look at quantitative facts and figures about child TV watching. I think this is great, but when in a debate, it is always best to be aware of the larger picture, the societal implications. I hope that these authors will help you formulate the big picture, and you can plug the statistical information into this so you have a coherent arguement.