Harmful Effects of Television over viewing among Preschool’s Development. We are all aware of the great impact made by television to our everyday living. Over viewing of television have harmful effects to a child’s development. Parents nowadays, are working either both or only the father or mother is and because they are too busy with their works they had a hard time caring, guiding and attending to their child’s needs and activities. That’s why some of them let their child be exposed to different kinds of modern technologies we have especially the television.
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Unknowingly of the risks their child may acquire from it at an early age. Television is one of the product of our modern technology and it become the most powerful, popular and influential medium of communication. That most of us use for our various reasons like entertainer, baby sitter, news reporter, product seller and others more. Television had been useful to our everyday life and had been source of information but it may also be able to affect negatively on a child’s learning and development. Dr.
Christakis (2008), a researcher who conducted a study relative to this matter indicates that “a child who is watching television at their early age may risk an attention deficit problem”. (p. 269) Over viewing of television for a child especially those in preschool, for about four or more than four hours daily can hinder their learning, stimulate violent behavior, and negative effect on their health. Some negative effects of over exposing to television to a child’s health are poor vision because of being too near in television and being always focused on screen.
Another is being obese, some researcher say that, “more than 60% of overweight incidents among children was linked to excess television viewing”. (2003). It happens because they were attracted by the television advertisement of eating junk foods, sweets, and other unhealthy foods and also they had been lack of physical activities due to over watching. Another is they become choosy to the food they want to eat. Usually they want the food that they had seen a child eating in the television. Next is how can television viewing affects a child’s ability to learn?
Based on the report of G. Solomon of Development of Children (2008), “children socialized to learn from television had lower than the normal expectations about the amount of mental effort required to learn from written texts, tended to read less and perform poor in school”. Watching television impedes the growth of longer attention span. It also interferes with the development of reading skills. Watching television let a child’s eyes fixed on screen and had not allow the eyes to move back and forth to allow read some words. That’s why children find difficulty learning to read.
Children who are over exposed in watching television find difficulty in speaking fluent and clear because they are not spending time to talk, they just watching most of their time. Also certain types of program cultivate aggressive or violent behavior in children. Like in some dramas and sitcoms they was able to watched wrong values like disrespectful children, parents and some youth drinking, smoking, gambling, lying, quarrelling or taking drugs. Children that view such shows are likely to fear that the world is scary or that something bad will happen to them.
The children will start to show aggressive behavior or start to behave like what they see on TV. (Bandura & Ross 1963). Based on my conducted interview, some parents don’t allow their child watch a scene that is not good but their child still saw it in their environment. That’s why they said it’s not just on television that they acquire those negative behaviors. Some say that they just allow their child to watch cartoons but sometimes there is a negative scene in cartoons like fighting which their child is copying.
These are only some of the harmful effects of television over viewing to your young preschool child who is still starting to grow and learn. Still it’s your choice to let your child exposed to over viewing of television, or limit their time spent in television viewing, or be on their side while watching and explain to them the scenes especially the bad scenes they are watching. Because good parenting is important while your child is growing up. Parental guidance is the essence that can make for a better child development and learning.
