Television Viewing #Final version

The Effects of Television Viewing

As said by Dr Thomas Alexander, television programmes are tailored to demand for continuous attention (Leigh 2001). His statement is proven to be true when American Times Use Survey (2003) reveals that men and women spent approximately 2.8 hours and 2.4 hours per day watching television respectively. Furthermore, full time workers spent majority of their time on TV, video and radio as compared to other activities (UK Time Use Survey 2000). This extensive television viewing has become a habit in our life and has raised worries among societies that this new habit of us might affect us in many ways. I strongly believe that extensive television viewing influence us in negative ways more than positive ways such as it influences the cultivation of behaviours, affects cognitive development and imposes negative impacts on health.

Excessive television viewing influences the cultivation of children’s behaviours. Research has shown that prolonged viewing of violent programmes will make children more responsive to violence. Children might form the impression that problems can be solved through violence. In addition, some poor behaviour can be attributed by imitating characters that doesn’t portray good examples. In many movies, men and women are portrayed in a specific and narrows role which leads children to think in a stereotyped way (Sharif 1991). To add on, television viewing made it difficult for children to focus on things such as homework (Leigh 2001). Children become lazier they are tempted to use their time watching television instead of doing homework (Rutherford 2002).

Moreover, extensive television viewing might contribute to poor development of children’s thinking skills. Programs like ‘Friends’ in which problems are sorted out in a short span of time encouraged children to think that problems can be solved easily (Sharif 1991). This makes children mentally weak as they become pessimistic and frustrated easily when have to deal with complex situations. Besides, imaginative skills remain undeveloped as television viewing is a passive activity. This leads to poor development of problem solving skills and organisational ability (Leigh 2001).

Lastly, watching television is a sedentary activity (Rutherford 2002). This time consuming activity eats the period set aside for exercise which is detrimental to health in terms of mentally and psychically. Lengthen periods in front of the television indicates that the children are not being physically active (Sharif 1991). The problem is made worsen when children indulge themselves with snacks during television viewing which can cause obesity and related disease (Rutherford 2002). Besides, too much exposure on television viewing deteriorates children’s communication skills. Children will become unsociable which is bad for their health as they will grow up to be passive.

Television viewing does bring positive influences in life too such as enables viewers to be refreshed and de-stressed (Rutherford 2002). However, we human tend to pick up bad habit more readily than good habits. Thus, I strongly believe television viewing brings more harms than good to us as extensive television viewing causes underdeveloped thinking skills, imposes negative impacts on health and prevents the build up for positive behaviours.