Children and Television Case

Children and Television

Jeff Rice

COM/172

November 15, 2011

Ronald Tatum

Children and Television

This is the beginning of the end for our youth during the early years.. The television has now become our life line for any escape with our kids, we'll sit them and down and they'll be entertain for hours. What is the impact of television and children's development? With parents turning to the television as a babysitter, is this helping or hurting our kids growth in mental development. With the new age days of just leaving kids in front of the television instead of having family time like they did in the 1950's while Dad watch the evening news and the kids watch cartoons on Saturday morning. Television has control of us.

With the advancement of television and now the advantages of television it has become a popular learning tool for everyone ages six months to adult. The school learning structure has become very technology over the years. There is always something to watch that will teach and enrich your mind. One of the advantages of television is cable in the classroom. Cable stations were able to broadcast educational television that was commercial free and in the early mornings so that they could be recorded and shared with other classrooms. (Wikipedia) With the advancement of the internet cable in the classroom has been replaced by the internet and the home video department where they are able to find any videos that they need for that subject.

Another learning tool that has help with the advancement of our kids is by watching educational television shows after school like Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer. These shows help enrich the minds of our youth. One show shows you how to spell and another one shows you how to speak Spanish.

Sesame Street has been known to change along with the American culture and the viewing habits of others to make sure that their educational goals were still there after all the years as being the first television show to make their curriculum about educational goals to shape the shows content(Wikipedia).

Dora the Explorer is a television shows that will help the kids read, write, and even understand Spanish. Every episode Dora the Explorer has an adventure in which she helps one her friends during the show and ask the viewer for help along the way, asking if they see a rope that they can climb, she'll even speak in Spanish and have the viewer repeat what she has said. With television shows like this it's no wonder why kids these days are smarter than they were 20 years ago. Kids that grow up watching these types of shows have advantage of being in the top of their class from the knowledge that they have been taught than the kids that do not watch these types of educational shows.

The many disadvantages of television with the age of having over 200 channels to watch on television. Our kids rather stay inside and watch television than go outside and play with their friends. One of the big problems with this, is it's not safe in certain areas for our kids to go outside and play in fear of something bad happing to them. So our kids will turn to television to help pass the time and with many households having more than just one television set there are many room that the kids can go watch T.V.

Is the television making our kids have an obesity problem? As Elizabeth Radisson stated in her post to the International Adoption Articles Directory "Obesity is considered a form of malnutrition in which food energy is stored as fat due to being unused. The incidence of child obesity has tripled since a study done in 1997 and now exceeds the incidence of adult obesity. Child obesity is bred within the home and the television is a major contributor to it."(E. Radisson 2007). While kids watch T.V. they snack and stare at the television only concentrating on what they are watching and not exercising their body (E. Radisson 2007) or even their mind. Television is a major factor in child obesity, but it can be stopped by turning off the T.V. and having the kids go outside for at least an hour a day to burn off all of their energy or