Do you have to have a TV in your children’s lives? Absolutely not. Scientists have studied families who have no TV whatsoever, and so how TV fits into their lives is not at all and actually, their children do amazing. You might be thinking that Television is the simplest technology and has very little even no effect on your children and so you just set your child off to watch TV considering it the great babysitter and you go do something else. You are wrong! Your child will learn whatever they’re gonna learn and it may not all be positive. Also, there is no proven evidence that TV has any educational or beneficial effects on children under the age of two years old. It however has some positive effects after this age.
Side one
TV and brain development: You have to imagine that until the age of two children are in the developing brain stage; they are intended to be exploring their environment, think of a 5 to 6 months child learning to roll, and then at 9 months they are crawling and there’s something about crawling with visual input that really helps brain development for future reading and attention. Now imagine you put that child in front of a screen for multiple hours and it’s passive so they’re not interacting with their environment and that’s gonna delay their development both in language and also attention and those natural skills of exploring. So you may choose if you want them to see political updates or not.
Parents’ children bonding: Parents who have background television on will say less than 200 words an hour to their child, whereas when there’s no TV on it’s almost a thousand words. So the connection between them is just decreasing the amount of interaction the child is having with their parent and there’s nothing more important for a child’s development, emotional status, and with their parent than having that actual verbal communication with them.
The content on TV is huge especially when you get older and older. For young children between 0 to 2 years old, it’s a flat-screen that’s two dimensional. Compare a one-year-old who’s chasing a ball, or learning how to bounce, or catch a ball that’s a three-dimensional experience, to the two-dimensional aspect of television where the ball just sort of comes and disappears. there’s really a whole different kind of learning and understanding of your world that happens when you’re in the physical world as opposed to watching the TV screen so that’s just a fact overall and that’s one of the big reasons to just say NO TV at all under the age two.
TV content and developing bad habits: As far as content affecting other things in your child’s development like violence; if children are watching violent shows there will be a clear cause and effect with watching a violent show and acting out those actions, of course, we’ve all seen horror stories of teenagers acting out violent acts and many times I’m not saying always it goes back to something they’ve watched or witnessed on television where they got that idea. there’s a definite correlation between watching violence and having violent acts happen, then it goes deeper than that; there are the ads for tobacco which are largely out of TV but alcohol is not and studies are showing that teens who like watching a certain alcohol commercial are likely going to drink those ways up. So, it definitely has a huge effect. Because they glorify those acts but they don’t show the victim or the real negative results of the act.
Do political updates affect your child’s psychological state? Do you watch the news with your children in the background? Do you think they won’t understand? Well, young children are like a new white notebook, everything they hear, watch, or witness will be inked clearly in their pages of mind. And that will affect their emotional and psychological state very deeply. Think of how frustrated you feel after watching the news that concentrates mainly on the bad. Global pandemics, natural disasters, mass shootings, suicide broadcasts, and violent political rally. Now, imagine how your child is feeling after hearing news about issues he/she understand and issues they don’t actually understand, which is worse because we fear things that we don’t understand and things that we don’t know about. They will feel frightened, worried, angry, or even guilty.
The other of the coin: after the age of two, watching
Our society is so full of distractions and ways that pull us apart whether it’s texting, emails, so anything that you can do as a family that you do together is bonding, that’s really important as well, so that may be a way in which TV viewing can be positive in a way that’s causing some bonding but definitely limited till less than one or two hours a day and we’re talking not just TV but add up all you’re screen time.
After the age of two, some TV shows can be really educational for children. Where they learn counting numbers, rehearsing letters, and spotting stuff. Also, some shows deliver a message about values and morals, kindness, and decent acts, and how to deal with situations.
Watching TV may as well help your child learn about new cultures and their languages. And that will help open his/her mind to diversity and variety between societies.
So, it’s two-sided coin. One cannot ignore its advantages and ban watching TV at home. But also, making it open for children to watch TV shows for a limitless amount of time might and can be harmful.
