TV Programs Hyjacks Children's Mindsets

 

TV Programs Hijack Children’s Mindsets

 

          According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, the 8-to18-year-olds spend around 4 or 5 hours on average watching TV in a day. Furthermore, the development of technology enables them to view more programs in another means such as via computers. I wonder if you have noticed lurked danger in this fact. I will talk about the negative TV influence on teens. This is an important area because TV has given teens a lot of chances indiscriminately to see what is ethically inappropriate for their age. The purpose of the essay is to make more and more people arise awareness of how TV control their mindsets, which can cause serious cases in the future.


          First of all, TV violence can lead to the violent acts in a real world. The TV violence doesn’t refer to violence committed with actual television sets but to the violent images shown on TV. The number of programs including violent contents that are broadcasted on TV has recently increased one after another. The survey of APP, which stands for The American Academy of Pediatrics, says “…by the time that your child reaches his teen years he probably will have seen roughly 8,000 murders in the course of watching TV programs.” It means a lot of violence would have been exposed to children’s eyes even though they may hardly regard it as a bad deed. That’s why some of them that have mixed fantasy up with reality are likely to commit crimes in a way influenced by TV programs after growing up.


          Second, TV programs glorify promiscuity and children misunderstand the significance of sexual intercourse. TV programs such as dramas and movies which show people sexual scenes overflow so much at the present. Even though most of them are made exaggeratedly to attract television viewers, children tend to believe easily this is real because they aren’t mature enough to make a judgment on the truth. It will be linked with the misunderstanding about sex acts, which can result to juvenile delinquency to make the matter worse. It is the topic that everyone should think over and children in particular have to gather as much right knowledge about sex as possible.


          Finally, TV programs plant unwanted thoughts in children’s mind. People cannot always see directly everything has happened in the world and TV would be one of the easiest and most efficient means for them to know about it. Of all the programs shown on TV, unfortunately, some focus on real events or situations, which can make children know negative things if they don’t need to know them for their age. For instance, when children watch a reality show about a certain couple getting divorce, a negative idea of marriage will probably be kept in their mind and it may have a bad influence on them somehow when they are on marriageable age. For their promising future, the programs that children views on TV may as well be chosen by their parents.


          In conclusion, these problematic programs above about violence, sex, and negative documentary would be bad for children’s education. That’s why their parents should keep track of which program they often watch as possible in order to stop them from watching such programs. In addition, parents need to spend more time discussing the contents used on TV with their children, which will help them judge by themselves what is right or wrong.