Nowadays with the development of science and technology, people live a very comfortable life. Almost every family has at least one TV. Watching TV is a good activity because it can help children widen their knowledge. However, there are some bad effects that parents should be aware of. Here are three bad points and two good points of TV’s influence on children.

According to the latest study showed that children in the United States watch an average of three to four hours of TV a day. It means that by the time they graduate from high school, they will have spent more time watching TV than they have spent in classroom I think that it is a bad habit.

First, children who spend all of their time watching TV will not have enough time for their important activities such as doing homework, reading books, or playing sports which are very useful for their generation. Due to the fact that they do not pay much attention to their studying, they will get low grades in school. Also, when they watch too much TV, they will become addicted, so they will encounter a problem if they can’t watch TV everyday.

Second, children also learn bad things from TV because they may not know what’s right, or what’s wrong. They will imitate what they have seen on TV since they think that the shows are generally acceptable. Some programs on TV have sexy images, violence and use of drugs or alcohol. This will have a very negative effect on children. Sometimes, they will see on TV that when a hero wants to achieve his goal, he has to kill his enemy, so they will assume that what they see is typical and right.

Third, children who spend much time sitting in front of TV tend to become obese. Additionally, while they are watching TV, they’re eating junk food; for examples, chips, chocolates, candies. These kinds of food will make them overweight. Furthermore, they will lack their social skills as they always stay home viewing TV. Therefore, they may become very timid and shy.

On the other hand, TV viewing is also very good because there are a lot of educated programs that are very good for children. They can learn many things from these programs. Meanwhile, some parents use TV as a babysitter so that they can have time to do their work.

Anyway, parents should be responsible for selecting proper programs that are good for their children by limiting the amount of TV viewing, turning off the shows that are not suitable for their children and never using TV to reward or punish children.

In conclusion, there are good and bad effects of TV on children. If parents know how to give a proper guidance about TV watching, children can use it in a healthy and positive way.

April 2003