Week 10 - Children and Television

Dear Parents,

Did you know that your children spend more time with television than with any other in-home activity except sleeping? That is pretty crazy if you ask me. Whatever happened to old fashioned family time? Now-a-days it seems like everyone is always just glued to the tube. That would explain the rising obesity rate among children and teens, though. It is hard to be physically active when you are sitting there staring at a screen. However, obesity is not the only problem that comes from watching too much television. Children who watch too much television can end up not progressing cognitively as they should be. There is a lot of weird, distorted things on television, and children often take those things to be reality. It is actually proven that children can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy in their younger years of life, thus they just take everything they see to be reality. This can be especially dangerous when it comes to violence on television. Children who watch violence tend to be more aggressive and violent themselves. This in turn inhibits children from forming friendships with their peers, because really, who wants to be friends with someone who beats up on you all the time? I know I don’t.

So now that we have seen some of the effects that come about by too much television use by children, we must ask ourselves: what is to be done? Well, it is my suggestion that it is up to you the parents to stop this madness! You need to take step up and take a greater role of responsibility in protecting your children from the media’s grasp. There are many things you can try. You can limit your children to an hour of television a day, or make sure the things that they are watching are age appropriate. Did you know that they even have this fancy thing called “parental control” with televisions now? Yes that is right, you can actually block channels and moniter what your children are watching electronically! However, I would caution against going to crazy with this, as it is not uncommon for children to just go to their friend’s houses to see what is not available at home. There must be a balance. So I leave it up to you to decide how you are going to save your children from the horrifying effects that television has the power to inflict. Good luck!

Sincerely yours,

Concerned Citizen