Cause And Efect Of Television

Cause and Effect of Television’s Influence

Watching television is very popular nowadays and children are addicted to it. On average, children and young adults spend nearly 4 hours a day watching television. It is one of the major issues nowadays which has many effects on children such as their health, lifestyle, and academics.

Watching too much television causes children to risk being overweight. Children tend to snack while watching television and are less likely to be active. “Two-thirds of the 20,000 television advertisements an average child sees each year are for food and most are for high-sugar foods.” After school advertisements on television are aimed toward children with advertisements for fast food and soda. While watching television, it seems a child’s metabolic rate goes lower than during rest, which means a child actually burns fewer calories while watching television than when just sitting, doing nothing (Boyse). According to a recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics assessed the amount of television watched and the weight status at one point in time and then a follow-up weight status three years later. The authors indicate that watching more television subsequently leads to larger weight gain. In addition, watching more than two hours of television a day was responsible for causing a fifth of the normal weight children to become overweight three years later.

The data provide support that television is a causative factor for obesity.”

Watching too much television causes children to risk being violent. An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on television by age 16 (Boyse). Violence is the attractive, effective, and preferred solution to most conflicts. Also, hundreds of studies of the effect of television on children and young adults have found that they may become “immune” to the horror of violence and accept violence as the only way to solve problems (Children and TV Violence). Television gives the messages to children that violent acts are fun and effective way to get what you want, without consequences that is. Children are more likely to imitate what they see on television than the young adults because they are vulnerable to learning from and adopting as reality the violence they see on television. For example, many children will try to be like their heroes while they are playing and they even think that “good guys’ beating up “bad guys” is normal and okay (Boyse).

Excessive television watching can shorten teenagers’ mental skills, shorten their attention spans and delays the development of language skills. The Department of Education states that language skills are best developed through reading and interaction with others in conversation and play (Graham). According to Jeffrey Johnson, lead

author of the study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Psychiatry, most teenagers are watching three or more hours of television a day leads to poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, bad grades and poor performance in college He also said, "Adolescence is known to be a 'critical period' for the development of many important cognitive skills. In this context, it is very understandable that, if youths spend more of their free time watching TV...rather than reading, doing homework and having other valuable learning experiences, the development of their cognitive skills may be inhibited" (Wood).

Many researches on the effects of children's exposure to television obesity, violence, and educational gives us a clear message that it causes children and young adults to be more aggressive, lazy, and decrease brain development, both immediately and as they grow older.

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