TV on young children. Is it good for their health?

Nowadays you can find TV’s from Drake’s mansion in Los Angeles to the most humble house in Iran.

TV’s are everywhere and that’s ok, that show that it’s a product accessible to everyone and also enhances how people see the world, informing themselves and getting to know other cultures and news right when they happen, for example Mexico recently legalized marihuana for recreational purposes and thanks to television we can know that the same day and even at the same moment that happened.

That’s not the problem; the problem is when children start watching TV at a very young age.

Firstly I want to start with explicit content on TV. Now you can see people naked insulting each other and so on, that’s not good for young children because at the age of 2 to 5 they start copying what they see, for example if their parents argue or yell with each other that’s what they are going to learn and in the near future how they are going to act. According to a study by the National Television Council (CNTV), 23, 6% of children between 4 and 12 saw television after 10 p.m. hours in 2011, time where not suitable content for their age is showed.

Secondly I’m going to talk about the hours that a 4 to 12 year old child spends watching TV.

Most American children spend about 3 hours a day watching television. Adding everything, all kinds of time in front of the screen may total of 5-7 hours a day. Surveys indicate that almost 40% of babies see some video at 5 months and at the age of 2 the number increases to 90%. In my opinion this is terrible for their health because being too much time in front of a screen may cause harder to get sleep for the child, increase the risk of developing attention problems, anxiety, depression and last but not least, obesity.

Thirdly we have the absence of the parents in the 21^st century.

Today most of both parents work practically all day long, and the only solution for them to get someone that looks after their child is hiring nanny/babysitter. These factors such as excessive working hours and financial stress can have a negative impact on the social, emotional and behavioral development of children, resulting in behavior problems and a bad academic performance.

To conclude, now we can say that TV on young children may affect them in the future in so many aspects of their lives, and may influence on how they react to problems and daily situations. Finally, I’m not here to tell you cannot let your son watch TV, it’s just a reminder that you should control the hours that they spend in front of a screen and what they see. 

Bruno Carbone 

II°B