Impacts of Watching Television

Positive effect: Allows Discovering and Thinking

Television offers kids a chance to discover and think. It also allows development of their brain. According to Clifford et al. (1995), television can assist in offering chances for growth. Children’s television channels can clearly indicate pros of this notion. In my opinion, the presence of channels dedicated to providing information suitable for different age groups has a great influence on the infant learning process. It is a result of television being considered as a primary source for children’s education before they are enrolled into kindergarten. The learning and moral development process are gradual as the kids are introduced to the fundamental topics such as alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors by watching educational programs. There are many various television programs for children, but the most common is Sesame Street. The survey carried out in 1996 found out that 95% of all the preschool kids were conversant with this program by the time they were 3 years old (Borgenicht, 1998). These records of statistics prove that the programs on educational topics are the primary sources of infant development and learning.

Negative Effect: Violent Scenes

To begin with, violent scenes aired on television inculcate phobias in children. The research has proven that the airing of aggression based scenes can result in the development of fear which leads to psychological complications for children viewers. The survey conducted in 1998 involving over 200 third via eighth graders proved that as the time of daily viewing television increased, the psychological trauma prevalence symptoms did the same (Cantor, 2000). I think these researches and statistics show that when children watch violent scenes on television they feel unrest and a deep fear in them. These surveys prove that as the amount of television watched by children increases, the same do the psychological trauma symptoms which include posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression. I believe that consequently watching of this aggression based scenes may cause unwillingness or difficulty in falling asleep for children. The violence exhibited in the scene may remain in the children’s memory over a long time that may result in hallucination, for instance, imagining somebody following them or someone under their bed.