Monday, March 22, 2010

Effects that TV has on Children

This article talks about the affects that television may or may not have on children. It gives examples of television shows such as sesame street and how it can have a positive affect. I feel that television shows that are strictly to teach children at a young age are important. TV is a very popular and regular thing in our generation. Everyone, including children, enjoy watching TV. Almost anything can keep a child at a young age's attention. These learning shows keep them entertained while they are learning new things. It can help them be ahead or pay attention better in school as well. When I was little, I enjoyed watching all of those types of TV shows as well and didn't even realize I was learning at the same time. When I babysit my cousin, I always put on those type of videos or shows and I see him repeating things he has learned. I think TV can have a positive affect as long as they are being supervised on what they are watching. If young kids have the freedom to flip channels and watch whatever they want, of course there can be negative affects. They can turn on violent things and learn bad language. Children will repeat anything they see or hear.

2 comments:

Julie Kim said...

This article and post discusses the effects that television has on children. The study discussed in the article claims that in their study of a large sample of 3-5 year old children from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds all benefited from watching the Sesame Street program, a learning based program. I also personally agree with the article and Stephanie in the belief that learning based television programs can have a good effect on the children who watch the show. But in this day and age, I strongly believe there are children who do watch too much television, even if it is educational, instead of playing outside and learning social skills. Where should parents draw the line for how much educational television shows should be seen? How much should children really be learning from television?
Overall, I agree with Stephanie sentiments but two problems I had with her post was ignoring the other claim of the negative impact that advertisement could possibly have on children and the claim that "Children will repeat anything they see or hear." The article also discusses television as a manipulative medium to aim commercial messages at children. Some studies show that some younger children better remember the advertisement rather than the Saturday morning cartoon which would defeat the purpose of watching the program in the first place. This especially becomes the case when children then go and ask for these advertised items from their parents. Also, I disagree with the claim that "Children will repeat anything they see or hear" because children (who are brought up in a loving and disciplined home) have the ability to tell right from wrong. So I hardly think that a child watching a "violent" show, such as Power Rangers, will promote violence (said as a general claim).

Kris said...

I think that although children are being expose to what is on tv, children can also chose not to watch it. There are some faults at both sides. By speaking this, " children will repeat anything they see or hear", can be both bad and good. In learning both sides, we can also see how we can further manipulate both sides of the story.