How Watching TV Affects Your Child – Pros and Cons
If your kids love to binge-watch on their favorite TV shows day and night, and you are wondering ‘how much TV time is too much?’, then you are not alone – there are tons of parents in your surroundings as well that have the same question as you.
According to a survey, children between the ages of eight to twelve in the United States spend around four to six hours watching TV every day. Well, that is a lot of screen time!! Oh, and that needs to be combined with the laptop time too, which is roughly two hours for every child per day.
Although watching quality TV programs help children to groom their cognitive abilities in several ways, still the excess of it can do more harm than good. Therefore, here we have come up with a detailed analysis of how watching TV can affect your child’s overall mental and physical wellbeing in different ways. It would also help you to determine if your child is watching TV in a healthy way or not.
So, let’s get started!
Advantages of Watching TV for Children
1. Knowledge
Thankfully, TV these days is full of knowledgeable and informative programs that help to enhance the learning abilities, vocabulary, and cognitive power in children. For example, there are multiple channels on TV that feature wildlife and nature documentaries that work wonders to expand their knowledge in several areas of language, atmosphere, and even colors.
Also, many parents find educational programs pretty helpful to instill good habits in their children. For example, encouraging good manners, healthy eating and meet and greet, etc. Visual representation of these values via animated characters, or even child stars, practically helps to enhance positive traits in children, which are helpful in improving their social skills, communication and relationship-building capabilities, etc.
If you are looking for some informative yet high-resolution TV services for your children, then don’t forget to reach out to a reliable TV service provider in your area. It would help you to select the best TV channels for your kids as per their liking. For your convenience, you can always opt for the Spectrum Select TV package that’s not only high-coverage but also pretty affordable for all types of users, starting from $44.99 per month only.
Spectrum Select TV Channels include ESPN, Discovery, CNN, Lifetime, TLC, HGTV, MTV & more, depending on your package type. For more information, please call the Spectrum helpline and send your query to their customer services representative.
2. Visual Information
Although many people argue that most of the content featured on the television is mentioned in the syllabus books too, still watching TV is always better than reading alone.
TV provides the children with the virtual presentation of different subjects and objects. For example, in history, and geography, TV shows practical footage of various cultures, countries, and civilizations around the world. It not only helps them to expand their knowledge but also improves their imagination.
Also, the right blend of colors and the visual display of various topics help to keep children interested in learning new topics for longer times.
3. Imagination
There are numerous TV shows and animated series that aim to spike children’s imaginative abilities and creativity. For example, they might show that the trees are orange, instead of green. Or, the sky is yellow, instead of blue.
Anything is possible in the imaginative world – the whole idea is to keep them interested and curious to find out more possibilities of imagination. In their little world, even horses can fly and dogs can sing – who knows? So, TV also helps big-time in bringing out that fun, imaginative little kid that loves his fantasy more than anything else.
4. Activity-Based Shows
There are numerous TV channels that feature knowledgeable activity-based shows nearly all the time. For example, art and craft, gardening, cooking shows, and even scientific experiments for kids. It makes the children aware of how different tasks are carried out in real life.
These shows also encourage little minds to take baby steps to achieve their everyday goals.
Drawbacks of Watching TV for Children
1. Violence
The biggest disadvantage of watching TV for children (especially younger children) is that they cannot differentiate between right and wrong. That can be extremely dangerous. Because they are little, they do not know whether the television is showing appropriate content or not. It tempts them to try on new activities without knowing the pros and cons associated with them.
Sadly, in many kids’ programs, violence is shown as something light and funny to achieve what you want. For example, hitting lightly on your friend’s head, spanking your pet to show off your violent stunts, etc.
It conditions the child to believe that it is okay to hit other people and to indulge in violent behaviors. Needless to say, these kinds of shows build aggression in children, and eventually, they grow up as frustrated individuals.
2. Unreal Expectations
While the television surely has the power to enhance your child’s imaginative and cognitive abilities, still sometimes it can also make them a victim of unrealistic expectations. For example, young children find it hard to realize that our real world and the TV world are two separate things. There are no maroon-haired mermaids in the ocean, or there is no fairy that brings them candies at night when they break their tooth, etc. Instead, they live in a world where they need to fulfill their wishes on their own.
All these experiences can deeply affect your kid’s realism. So, although you can’t always separate your children from the fictional world, still you can keep an eye on their TV shows to guide them from time to time.
3. Concentration
Have you ever noticed how many times you need to take your child’s name in order to get their attention when they are watching TV?
According to research, watching excessive television can hamper the focus and concentration of children. Even after they switch off the TV, the visual presentation and background noise of their most-watched shows stay in their minds which impairs their attention levels and concentration to perform other tasks.
That’s the main reason why TV binge-watchers are not very good at focusing on their studies. Most of the time, these kids have some other show going on in their minds, even while staring at their course books.
4. Obesity
Health experts say that longer TV times are linked to higher obesity levels in children. And, honestly, it makes sense. More TV time means more idleness, and excessive snacking.
Also, most of the time children are munching on unhealthy goodies while watching TV, instead of healthier options. That’s one of the major reasons why the obesity rates in children are increasing day by day in the United States. Children seem to indulge more in TV watching rather than exercise or other healthy activities.
To Sum It Up
Although being parents, we can’t completely impose a ‘ban’ on television time for our children, the best we can do is just limit it. It can also be quite helpful to sit down with our kids and tell them about the drawbacks of watching excessive TV. It will surely help them to realize its adverse effects on their overall health and wellbeing.
If you wish to know more about the pros and cons of watching TV in your children, then do check out this in-depth guide by lifepersona. But before you click on the link, just ensure that you are connected to a fast internet connection like Spectrum so that your webpage does not take much time to load.
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