Children under 5 shouldn’t watch TV

Television is a necessary part media of our daily life, and it affects everyone, including children.  Also, It is a controversial topic that whether watching television is good or bad for children.and the argument is going on until now.  In my opinion, I agree children under 5 five shouldn’t watch TV. There are many reasons for this.  some reasons as following:

First of all, some people think TV can help to develop children’s brains; but lots of evidences also shows that nothing can replace the human connection in brain developing for young children. Young children ranging from one 1 to 5 five is the most important developing  mental stage; because their brains are sensitive and develop fast quickly before age two  2, and they will receiver abundant information to help them to develop their brains every day. Some reporters contend that the interaction of parents and children is the best way to develop children’s brains at any age. That is Nothing can replace it—even TV screen that is full of colorful images and garbled gabble sounds. There is a trueth story that illustrtes can approve that. I have a friend who has a baby boy. She went to work and left her baby to her old-aged parents. Her parents couldn’t play with the baby all the time because of their old age and low less energy. So they turned on the TV at home all the day. The result is visible that TV  obviously was a good baby sitter for them—it works 24 hours for free with  and no break; but all the watching  they did result in late speaking development  lately for the baby. Finally, the baby boy’s language skill is under average now—evens a little stutter until he was 6 years old. It is true that everyone is very busy with  for their work and life nowadays, but parents can’t neglect children’s development, and need to take responsibility for playing an active role in the healthy development of their children.

Secondly, some TV programs have a few violent scenarios that can affect young children’s behavior. Most evidences indicate that violent television shows lead to violence and aggressive in children between the age two  2 and five 5. In fact, young children can’t distinguish right or wrong to some extent, because their brains haven’t developed completely; and  so they like to imitate behaviors whatever behaviors they watch on from television. (Also, children learn by imitating others.) There are some statements from papers can verify that, as following:

 

Those statements mentioned above can manifest that children who watch violent TV programming are tend to be more aggressive than the other children who watch nothing. My personal experience of my stepson is a good example for it. He began to watch TV when he was 18 months old. His favorite TV program was football games. Right after he watched TV for a short time later, we found his behavior was very rude and aggressive. He used to push down and hit other kids like a football player. Worse, he bit teachers and even made classmates bleeding  a couple of times. After that, his teacher called for a behavior observer to inspect his behavior in daycare center for several days. The observer suggested to us that don’t let him watch any TV programs with aggressive  has more  behavioral scenes, including sport games and fighting carton shows. Finally, his bad behaviors almost disappeared, and his temper was more peaceful after we controlled his TV time seriously( two hours every week). According to this experience, I believe deeply that TV programs can unconsciously affect young children’s behaviors .    

Thirdly, heavy TV watching can affect children’s health as well, such as: their children’s eyes, weight, sleep and mood etc. The most serious effect for young children is the damage to of their eyes. Scientists say that the human’s  eye is designed to look at things in 3D using stereoscopic vision, so looking at flat surfaces for long periods of time can affect the correct development of sight. This is especially harmful in children under six 6. In addition, heavily TV addicted children are lack of physical exercise  activities and enough sleeping. Hence, most of those children suffer health problems, such as  e.g., overweight problem, obesity, tiredness, mania etc. Moreover, TV addicted children would get angry easily if they can’t watch TV. Also, My stepson is a typical case for that. He began to wear shortsighted  light glasses (his vision was 20/40 with glasses in right and 20/50 with glasses in left) when he was five  5 years old, because he watched too much TV when he was young. After that, we controlled In all, TV can influence children’s health indeed.  

Finally, spending much time on watching TV can also interfere with children’s learning and relationships with others. Some researchers explain that TV viewers tend to receive information passively in a directly way instead of discovering new things by themselves. On average, TV addicted children gain less fewer knowledge than normal children because addicted children don’t like to think about any problems deeply. As a result of, they simply rely on  just can obtain direct information what they saw and heard on TV.   On the other hand, TV occupies much precious time in addicted children’s daily livesfe so that those children don’t have enough more time to play with their friends, or even no to spare time share with their family.  That impacts the relationship between children and their friends and family and leads to bad social skills for children. Thesere is a statics show some more details for us. 

        To sum up—as a coin has two sides—TV has its advantages and disadvantages. But parents need to can make informed their own decisions about whether turn on the TV for their children. In my opinion, it is absolutely bad decision to turn on the TV for young children who is under five less than 5 years old. Parents should spend more time, and to read for their kids or play with them rather than taking a simple thoughtless action—pressing one button for their kids. (In the long run, it will be worth be effort.)