p.104 #3 first draft [han soo jung] 200903726

 

Children and TV

 

Let's go back to our mother and father generation's childhood. They do not have much relation with television. They almost have none because in those days TV was a luxury item which anyone couldn't buy. But now, children grow up together with TV. And for that, TV has a huge influence in their lives today. It had good effects, but not always good ones.

 

When kids watch TV, and if you watch them, you can see that they barely take their eyes off the screen. Some parents use this to make their child quiet. When the baby cries, they turn on the TV and keep the volume up, and put their child in front of the TV. And the baby stops crying. How easy it is! But it is not quite sure if it's a good idea. Children receive everything without filtering, because they cannot divide which is good and which is not. And TV doesn't show only good things. Few days ago I heard a story from another professor that few years ago there was an arson attack and the criminal was a little boy from that house. And the victim was his younger sister. He said that he prevented the fire because at movies and soap operas, the main character or the hero rescues the person captured in fire very dramatically, and he thought he wanted to try it. Not this serious, but we can also see young boys jump from a high place with a cape on their neck saying, "I'm a SUPERMAN!!" and break their legs. If they did not know what a TV is, would this things happen? My answer to this is no. They just believe every thing on TV is real. And if they get used to watching TV for hours and hours, is it easy for them to become "outsiders." It becomes hard for them to make relationships with other people, because they are used to receive information in one way-only from TV to them. To prove this, there was a research that if a child watches TV too much, the negative effect can influence the child for the rest of his life. It says that if a less than 2year old kid watched TV over 1-2 hours, when they became 10 years old, the physical movement was 13 percent less than average, and 10 percent higher to get bullying by other kids. (Research from Montreal Univ. Canada, published by LiveScience, 2010) there is definitely good part of TV too. Like Sesame's Street, it is good to educate children with singing and dancing. But the normal programs, we need to think about it seriously.

 

Kids suck information like a sponge, and TV is all around them. Maybe kids and TV are inseparable. But by grown-up's effort, it can be. We can control them which to watch and which to not. But without this, TV is still just a box making children dumb.