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Idiot’s Box Every parent thinks about it, and every child thinks about it. Although the two thoughts are similar in no way, they are thinking about the same thing. The parent’s concern is why his/her child is glued to the television set, the child, however, is wondering what he/she is going to watch next. Television presents an array of choices to children, and if used properly can transform a child into a walking encyclopedia. Although television contains many educational channels, children regard them as boring. Channels such as Animal Planet are educational and provide useful information on animals. The community should enforce some kind of a program during summer break that teaches young and adolescent children that educational channel do not necessarily mean that they are boring. Another problem that many parents face is that their children do not know about anything but television. The community and parents can pitch in to help keep the number of children addicted to bad content on television down. People, and the government, are running many programs about drug awareness, gang awareness, and the dangers that smoking presents. All these programs are having positive effects, but a new program should be enforced warning children of the dangers they face by watching nothing but television. Children need to be reminded constantly of the paths that life will present to them and choosing between making yourself a couch potato, or a successful person is one of them. Parents play an important part in this and it is their responsibility to monitor what the child is watching on television and new advances in television technology makes fulfilling their responsibilities a lot easier. With the help of community programs, such as the ones above, maybe more will choose the right path. The hypnotic effect of the television has puzzled parents for years. The reason for the hypnotic effect probably has to do with the fact that children do not have to use their mind (they get so dull mentally that they barely respond to anything). Most children try their hardest to restrict their mind usage to a minimum, and the television is a perfect way to restrict their mind usage. The urge to prevent their minds from working addicts them [children] to television, and that is another reason that many children despise educational channels. Unmonitored viewing of television presents a possible danger because there are some children that do not understand the difference between the content shown on television and real life. Although most children understand the difference between fact and fiction, the ones that do not are the ones that may cause a tragic event. These are the ones that should be monitored constantly and shown the tremendous amount of positive information that is shown on the television each day. These kids mistake the content of television shows; they believe that everything shown on television is reality. Children such as these do not understand that television should be used as an informative resource rather than an interpretation of real life Television is accessed by millions of children each day, and the majority of them watch it longer than they should. Community activities and awareness programs might help keep this growing problem in check. Television is one of the most innovative devices ever invented and children should be able to understand the purposes for which the television was invented. Date posted : August 02, 1998. What do you think about this? |