EFFECTS of TELEVISION on CHILDREN
In recent years, many children have spent a lot of time by watching
television. Instead of
playing with their friends outside or at home, many children spend most of
their time by watching television. They learn many things from what they watch.
And, of course, television has both positive and negative effects on children.
Negative effects are: Children’s social life is affected in a bad way and there
are problems in their both physical and mental health. Positive effects are:
Some programs are educational and children can learn lots of things from them
and both negative and positive effect is cultural interaction.
Firstly, as a negative
effect, children’s social life is affected in a bad way. If children are not
controlled by their parents, while children watch television, they can watch
dangerous or harmful programs for them, and thereby they can get some bad
habits or they may tend to do those bad habits or negative characteristics of people. These things do
not have importance for some people who make these programs and put such bad
behaviours or habits to the television programs when children watch television.
In some child films, alcohol is showed. However, it is known and proved that
alcohol is harmful for people (health). Some advertisements can have such bad
things. In this way, children have a slight acquaintance to alcohol and also
smoking, drug, etc. If these films (or advertisements) which have harmful
things for children are showed in television by television programmers, it
should be at late hours at night when many children go to bed.
Another
negative effect of television on children is violence. Some cartoons and films
show violent scenes. These things stimulate the children to behave violently to their environment
and people. Especially young children is affected easily what they watch or
see. Some cartoons, such as Ben Ten, Bakugan, Pokémon, etc., affect children in
negative ways. There are many violent scenes in those cartoons. Violence passes
through to the children’s behaviours, words, plays. In the article, which is
written by Ahu Kaskun and Selen Öztunç, it is stated that:
Children starting from 3-4 years until
the age of 12-13 watch cartoons 1-2 hours per day and as well as when children
and young people concerned, they remain under intense bombardment of violence
are seen. As a result of some researches it has been determined that children
imitate the aggressive behaviours (Akarcalı 1996).
For example, I saw these side
effects on my brother. He tended to be nervous and applying some movements to
someone while he was playing with his friend. Murder films also affect
children’s psychology. In he book called “Children and Television” it was
mentioned that by the age of 12, children would have watched about 20.000
murders and about 100.000 other scenes of violence (Lemish 72). According to
Lemish:
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Secondly, in
addition to these negative effects, another one is that some health problems
about psychology, mental come to existence. Due to watching television so much,
children’s eyes, in fact not only children’s but also adults’ eyes, can have
impairment and, of course, this is not a good thing for young children. Another
problem is obesity. In the presence of television, they want to eat and as a
result of this they eat a lot therefore obesity is the case. In the article called
“Effect of Television to The Child’s Mental Development”, Paul Smith, also
prepares the BBC children’s programs, an interview about the impact of
television on children mentions that today, families can’t have enough time to
spend with their children and the outside world is also not secure so they
provide more technology for their children at homes. As a consequence of this
situation, children move less and eat more beyond exposing to more information
about almost every topic. As a result, in terms of mental and physical, the
number of children being obese is increasing.
Another thing
is some cartoons and films show and teach magic. Especially, children are
affected easily from this and they can tend to do magic because their
imaginative skills are much more than adults. For example, due to cartoon/s, my
4-year-old brother tried to lift something by moving his hand towards that
object.
Thirdly,
different from the negative effects, television has also positive effects on
children and for their development. Some child programs teach to children how
to draw a picture (e.g. Louie), singing child songs (e.g. Pepee), and making
hand-crafts and so on. In one
article, it is said that a new study suggests that educational television
programs are successful in broadening young children’s knowledge, affecting
their racial attitudes and increasing their imaginations, according to a study
published today in the November issue of Pediatrics, the official
journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (Rupin R. Thakkar,
Michelle M. Garrison and Dimitri A. Christakis, 2006).
Some cartoons, such as
Caillou, Pepee,
Backyard Science, Anne Shirley, etc, teach lots of things to the children. My
brother has learnt quite a few things, knowledge from Caillou, especially about
normal life. From Louie, he learnt how to paint some things. Sometimes, he says
something and in my opinion he can’t know that knowledge at that age. Then I
ask him where he learnt or heard that knowledge. He says generally “from Caillou”.
Thanks to the Caillou or some other cartoons he learns a great many things. He
learns some songs from Pepee, he memorizes them. In addition to these
knowledge, his some behaviours can change or add new behaviour to his life from
what he watches. As well as, children learn some things from the television
documentaries. They can be about animals, water life, some cities and so on.
They can obtain general culture from them.
Finally, cultural interaction
can be seen in children. In cartoons or films are shown different countries.
Therefore, children learn different cultures. This can be general culture and
difference for them but also it can be dangerous because they can be
influenced. Maybe it can be seen differences in their behaviours, words, etc.
It is a good thing that they learn and see dissimilar life styles. When they
are young, their perspectives come large. However, when they watch a thing
which reflects that country’s culture very much, in terms of possibility of
starting to forget child’s own culture, it is a dangerous thing and television
programs support the globalization and form global culture.
According to Lemish, “ Media
and mostly television are blamed for being the central mobilizers of the
globalization processes, as they serve as a channel for transmitting Western
worldviews, including values, cultural tastes, economic and political
interests”, and he adds “in contrast to this process or perhaps as a
complimentary force, there is the strengthening of the development of self-awareness
of local sub-cultures that are striving for recognition and an opportunity to
flourish, who demonstrate strong resistance to what they perceive to be a
takeover by a super-power Western culture” (214).
REFERENCES:
okulweb.meb.gov.tr/06/15/386266/TV_2.pdf
http://ilef.ankara.edu.tr/id/bolum.php?bodb=351&alt=1
Blackwell
Publishing, 2006
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