In modern society, television has been part of the community, and every person has been enjoying watching television programs including children. However, children have been spending most of their time watching television, and this seems to affect them both socially, psychologically and physically. Most children spend their time watching television programs because they are idle, many can grasp what is being said on the TVs and parental neglect on the children. Many of the television programs are intended for the adults, not the kids and children watching them greatly affects them especially through influencing their behavior. Prolonged television viewing affects children as it cause violence and aggressive behavior, increases habit of sex and sexuality among teenagers, causes problems of nutrition and obesity as well as leading to tobacco, alcohol and substance abuse among the teenagers.
Causes of Prolonged Television Viewing
There are many factors which contribute to prolonged television viewing in children. One of the reasons why children can watch television programs for many hours is idleness (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). Many children are not given homework assignments and after school hours, weekends and on holidays, these children are idle hence they end up using their time in watching televisions. Many of the television programs are implemented for adults, and when children view them, they will be forced to concentrate for a long time to understand what is being said in the program. Prolonging viewing of television in children can also be caused by parents’ perspectives towards the television programs. Many parents think that watching television programs will make their children acquire new skills and understand the specific life skills required for their development and survival. This makes parents encourage their kids in watching television hence they might get addicted to the TVs.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Many children and teenagers have been addicted to television programs making them spend most of their time viewing TVs. Many parents do not realize TV addiction in their kids because they usually think addiction occurs only in drugs, but they should understand that regular watching of television is addictive especially to the kids. Addiction makes children and teenagers develop tastes and interest in viewing TVs, and this makes them adversely affected by the TVs (Sun et al., 2015). These children are lazy and irresponsible as they spend most of their time watching their favorite programs and movies rather than engaging in productive activities such as reading and exercising. Many parents have contributed to the habit of prolonged television viewing in their children because they of parental neglect because these children are not guided on the productive activities. Many parents are busy with their work to make money forgetting their role of overseeing their children in the right ways as these children will use their time watching television in absentia of their parents.
Effects of Prolonged Television Viewing
Prolonged television viewing contributes to the development of violence and aggressive behavior in children. Many kids and teenagers watch movies of murder, assaults, rapes, assaults and armed robberies and this might affect the social behavior of kids as these actions interfere with their brain development. According to Özmert et al., (2002), 61% of television programs have been known to be violent with children programs being among the violent programs. For example, children and teenagers enjoy watching action movies which involve the use of guns and many killings which may affect the psychological growth of kids. This exposure of kids and young people to violence affects their social behavior and can contribute to their abuse and aggressive behaviors. Prolonged television viewing may contribute to sex and sexuality in children and teenagers because some television programs such as soap operas involve sexual activities (Stamatakis et al., 2011). The increase of television programs on sex and family matters have greatly influenced teenager’s attitudes towards sex, beliefs, and values with many of them considering TV programs and social media as their primary sources of sexual information.
Prolonged television viewing in children causes nutrition problems and obesity as kids do not get time for exercising hence they remain physically unfit. According to Grøntved & Hu (2011), television viewing in kids have increased the problem of obesity in children because of reduced use of energy in physical exercising and increased dietary energy intake when watching and due to the effect of food advertisements. Watching of television in children has contributed to the increased problem of tobacco, alcohol and substance abuse among teenagers. This is because most of the television programs and media messages aim at advertising tobacco, alcohol, and other illicit drugs and this affects children attitudes towards these substances. According to cite tobacco and brewery industries use a large amount of money to advertise their products and this had significantly impacted teenagers’ attitudes and beliefs towards drinking and smoking and can easily influence their consumption.
In modern society, prolonged television viewing has increased in children, and this has dramatically affected their social, physical and psychological behaviors. The increased problem of extended television watching in kids is caused by addiction to television in kids. The habit is caused by the kids being idle as they develop tastes and interests in watching their favorite movies and programs. This issue is caused by parental neglect as many parents are busy looking for money and tend to forget their responsibility of showing their kids the productive activities. Prolonged television viewing in children cause violence, and aggressive behaviors in kids as their social behavior are affected by the programs they watch. Kids watch sexual, and family programs and this can easily influence their sex and sexuality beliefs and attitudes especially in adolescent teenagers. Many products such as alcohol and tobacco are advertised through TVs, and the advertisements can change teenager beliefs and attitudes towards these programs as well as their consumption. Parents should have time for guiding their children on their free time by showing them the importance of engaging in productive activities such as reading and exercising. They should control the programs their kids watch and allow them only to watch children programs which are educative. Parents should teach their children some watching skills especially to the adolescents to help them evade influence of some programs. Parents taking their responsibility of providing proper guidance to their children will reduce cases of prolonged television viewing in their children.
References
Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2002). The effects of media violence on society. Science, 295(5564), 2377-2379.
Grøntved, A., & Hu, F. B. (2011). Television viewing and risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis. Jama, 305(23), 2448-2455.
Özmert, E., Toyran, M., & Yurdakök, K. (2002). Behavioral correlates of television viewing in primary school children evaluated by the child behavior checklist. Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine, 156(9), 910-914.
Stamatakis, E., Hamer, M., & Dunstan, D. W. (2011). Screen-based entertainment time, all-cause mortality, and cardiovascular events: population-based study with ongoing mortality and hospital events follow-up. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 57(3), 292-299.
Sun, J. W., Zhao, L. G., Yang, Y., Ma, X., Wang, Y. Y., & Xiang, Y. B. (2015). Association between television viewing time and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis of cohort studies. American journal of epidemiology, 182(11), 908-916.
