Your Children’s Television Experience

In the past, television was a machine that dominated our lives with its colorful images and catchy tunes. We relied on it to teach our children, inform our neighbors, and pass down information from one generation to another. It is one of the most important inventions of human civilization. Yet, it has fallen on hard times recently, as TV stations are folding up shop and cable providers are struggling to find ways to justify offering us more channels. As a result, we are left to wonder what will happen to this great medium.

It’s not only children who are affected by TV. The elderly have long been the primary users of TV, but it is becoming apparent that the phenomenon is impacting more adults as well. The average American spends about two hours and thirty-five minutes per day viewing TV, and this number increases everyday. The average woman watches nearly eight hours of TV per week, and the children spent a similar amount.

Adults are beginning to react to the way TV influences their lives, and there are plenty of reasons to worry. For one thing, television may be physically harming our children. Many children have been rushed to the hospital after watching too much TV, and the resulting effects on their bodies have been real frightening. Televisions are known to cause low blood pressure in young children, and even adults. Children can suffer from headaches, nausea, and dizziness after hours of viewing.

Televisions have also been known to cause learning disabilities in children. Young toddlers who are exposed to TV in their early years have been found to have slower cognitive development than children who were not. This may explain why so many families are putting the Internet in place in the family room instead of the traditional TV.

Kids who are exposed to TV for too long are becoming more inactive, and this trend is not a good trend for our society. Sitting in front of a computer for hours on end, day after day, may eventually begin to take a toll on our children’s mental faculties. They are not learning how to solve problems as they should, but instead are acquiring more video gaming skills instead. The longer TV is left in the child’s room, the more they will be sedentary and less well-rounded as they grow older.

When it comes down to it, parents really have no control over what their children watch, what they look at, or what they listen to. In fact, children are the ones responsible for making the rules. We should all be glad that they are making these decisions for themselves, but we can’t really do anything about it. The best thing we can do for them is to show them the consequences of their actions, and remind them that there will come a time in their lives when they need to be responsible for the things they say and do.