Effects of Television on Children

Abstract

Television is the most important and effective medium of communication for marketers and many companies. With the growing technology, the importance of TV has also been increasing from past two decades. It is one of the most significant tools of making profits and grows business as it directly communicates to target audience. Especially young generation is spending more time watching TV mean while avoiding other important activities.TV has greatly influenced children in some negative and positive way but its negative effects would not be neglected. The paper discusses the brief introduction of Television, its major impacts and in last, the result of the research with few concluding points.

Effects of Television on Children

Thesis Statement

Watching television has adverse effects on children.

Introduction

Television is one of the means of communication broadcasting moving images and objects. The images can be colored or black and white with sounds. In the year 1920, it started showing commercial and since then, it has become the important mean of news, entertainment and advertising for many businesses and institutions. During 1970s, the concept of DVDs, video cassettes, laserdiscs and the advance blue ray discs let television set being used commonly for watching broadcasted and recorded material.

Television is one of the most frequently used electrical devices at home. Some families watch it together and some watch it individually. As far as children are concern, studies have proved that they are the most intense users of television. Younger generation watches television for 3 to 4 hours a day. On average, they spend half or sometimes equal to adult's work week watching television (Patel, 2008).

The time a child spends watching TV is time leaving other important activities such as reading, the schoolwork, social life, the game and interaction with family. Children learn things from television: some can be educational and other inappropriate or incorrect. In most cases, children do not differentiate between the content they are good and those who do not, just as his innocence does have difficulty distinguishing between fiction presented on television and reality.

Discussion

Children watching television program are under the influence of numerous commercials, some of which are alcoholic beverages, convenience foods and toys.

The risks of excessive television viewing for children

Television is the most common and established media that controls children's life. A study conducted by Canadian Teachers' Federation in 2003 which suggested that TV is the everyday hobby of 75% of Canadian children, including both male and female children studying in grade 3 to 10.

The effect of TV on children based on various factors: the time spent on TV, age and personality of children, as they view individually or with adults and parents and how much their parents participate in discussing about the subjects they watch (http://media-awareness.ca/, 2012).

In order to reduce the possible negative impact, it is necessary to know the expected outcomes of watching television. Some of them are:

1. Lower grades in school: As they spend more time on watching TV than doing homework and study. 2. Read fewer books: Too much TV time left for ...