Television is hamrful to children !?

I've been looking some articles talking about television is harmful to children and barely seen articles that fully support television is beneficial to children. I think that is a very yes or no question because not all the programs are containing inappropriate content and also not all has educational content.

Children are easier to get influenced by the surrounding environment or we can say children are more learnable than other age of people. Therefore, children who are at young age should have parents ruling the programs they watch. The inappropriate content such as violent, sexual can have a huge impact on children's behaviors because their brains are like a sponge absorbing fast. Their learning theory is what Rodman's "social learning theory", which they learn from observing and imitating others. Every news broadcasts shows what happened in the society such as accidents, murders. It is a social mirror to the audience, but it is a bad influence for children. A statistic shows that by the time children get to eighteen years old, "they witness on television 200,000 acts of violence including 40,000 murders." It is nothing to we adults, but this is sending out the messages to the children of how they should solve the problems. Also, the entertaining programs such as movie channels is constantly playing movie that contains violent or sexual contents. Children watch them when their parents are not around; it is difficult for them to distinguish between right and wrong since they haven’t received the formal morality education yet in their lives. It is, especially when children admire the “fantasy movie star as a hero, difficult to tell children the difference between fantasy and reality.

Terminator 2

Although television is harmful to children at some points, but television has a great teaching potential and it is also beneficial to children and parents. If parents do a good job on choosing and watching the programs, then parents are doing their young ones a huge educational favor. Dr Deuchar, a senior lecturer in Strathclyde University’s education faculty, said “Encouraging children to make links between what they see on the screen and the content of their play can do much to foster creativity, decision-making skills and opportunities for problem-solving that will be useful to them in their future.” A channel like “Sesame Street” is an educational channel for young children to learn language. It is fun and it attracts young children’s attention. Channels like this also increase the chance for parents interact with their children.

Sesame Street

It is a huge debate of realtionship between television and children. It can be positive and negative. It is everyone's responsbility to watch out for their children since the broadcasts have been entertaining the audience for long time. It is no one's right to tell the broadcasts what to show and hide.