Relationship Between Television Viewing and Academic Achievement - Research Paper Example

Is There a Relationship Between Television Viewing and Academic Achievement Abstract Television plays an important role in the lives of children. The research examines the relationship between Television viewing and academic achievement. Studies reveal that there is a strong relation between both positive and negative effects of television viewing, depending upon the content and amount of television viewed by the children. Whereas it is true that educational television does cater to the development of the children older than 3 years of age, excessive viewing of television programs of any kind has a negative correlation to the academic achievement of children. Is there a relationship between Television viewing and Academic Achievement? Introduction From the time of its invention, television has acted as a powerful media, a source of information as well as entertainment, in the lives of the people. In today’s world, television has served as the most readily available source of entertainment. Television appears not only in the home, but also in the office, and, sometimes, even in cars, and now there are DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) players that are portable and can easily be carried around. Television, this small box of wonders, is seen to have a big role in the life of a common man. There is a great impact of television in the lives of people; the impact of television on children causes great concern amongst the parents, teachers and schools. Television is an integral part of modern life, and, by extension, of modern day children. Children watch an astronomical amount of television. Since they spend more time watching television than they do in the classroom, it is important to know the effects it has on children. Some parents use television as the cheapest baby sitter for their young children. It is common for the parents of infants to use television as a substitute for attention. Since television plays a dominant role in the lives of children, it is important to know what the different research studies say about the effects of television on the academic achievement of children. Until 1980, social science researchers had only an implicit theory of how viewers watched television, and/or were affected by it. Among the earlier literature, we see great agreement on the negative effects of television content on children’s cognitive and learning skills. Recent research also shows the importance of interdiction of television exposure on children. Statistics show that 83% of children, ranging from 6 months to 6 years in age, view screen media averaging 2 hours every day, and, among them, 1/3 live in homes where the television is on all the time, 1/3 children have a portable DVD player or television in their bedroom and 12% are put to sleep with the television turned on (Anderson & Pempek, 2005). The intent of this paper is to examine the effects of this television exposure on the academic achievement of children. The most recurring and popular topic in the press, and amongst parents and educators, regarding this topic, is how poorly the children end up doing at school because of how much television they watch; in other words, they contend that the amount of television viewing is inversely proportional to the academic achievements of children. It is important to know whether there is evidence to show that television is so responsible in lowering the academic achievements of children. There have been researches that have substantiated the claim that television has an impact on children; it causes short attention spans, disassociation from literature, decreased level of concentration and loss of capacity to think linearly in them (Mielke, 1994). In the view of Kirkorian, Wartella, and Anderson (2008) television causes a series of sensory bombardment that hinders cognition and reflection in children. If television has such an impact on children, as is shown through this study, it is very important to know how it is effecting the young generation. One of the concerns that the parents have today is that their children are no more interested in reading; they would rather spend their time watching television, which does not require much use of their mental faculties. Educators have concerns over the fact that many of the television shows have dazzling visual effects that cannot be duplicated in the classroom; herein, there might be an association of not liking to read, as reading a book is not as visually rewarding as watching a television can be. Realizing that learning to read is the fundamental window through which all the other subjects can be understood, it is very important for the parents and teachers to realize the impact of television on the reading of the children (Wright et al., 2001). In the meritocratic world of today, academics do not only mean the literacy development, but also include the total development of the child, which includes the social, emotional, personal and physical development, along with intellectual development. Researches confirm that children who watch a lot of television end up becoming passive learners. This decreases the power of the child’s reflective thinking, which will eventually lead to him/her expending little mental effort to read and solve arithmetic problems (Shin, 2004). Another physical development factor, obesity, is another factor that is associated with television. As children watch television, they do not attempt any physical activity; moreover, they snack on unhealthy food, thus decreasing their metabolism rate. The combination of these two aspects can lead to obesity. From the standpoint of the social development of children, too much television can prevent them from developing the skills that are required and are important for long-term happiness. These social skills are important for the children in and outside the school. Most of the schools have group discussions and group study time. If the children lack these social skills, they might lag behind in their studies, because of not being able to mingle with the group. These points are very important to investigate; if this box does have an effect on the total development of the children, then it is important that we investigate the extent of such an effect. The positive or negative impact of television does not simply depend on how much television children watch, but also on what their watch (Mielke, 1994). There are researches that show the positive influence of television in the early years of children’s life; children who are exposed to television at an early age are thereby prepared for school, as television helps them in building their vocabularies (Wright et al., 2001). This is an interesting factor in television viewing, and should be focused on by teachers, parents, policy makers and the media alike, in order to gauge the impact of television on younger children. Another hypothesis about television is that it has an impact on the test scores of children. Children today cannot resist watching television, which results in taking time away from homework and other study. If it does have an impact, then it is very important to examine how television has this impact on the educational achievement of children. Summary of Research Studies Shin (2004) examined the different channels of the influence of television on four aspects of academic development of children. The four hypotheses that were thereby examined were: the time displacement hypothesis, the mental effort-passivity hypothesis, the attention arousal hypothesis and, finally, the learning-information hypothesis. They were examined using the quantitative study method, whereby data was collected from the longitudinal survey undertaken by the Institute for Social Research. The researcher examined the amount of time spent on watching television and the time spent on the three mediating variables: the time spent on homework and study, leisure reading, and impulsive behavior. These were compared to the academic achievement of the children by studying their scores on reading and math. The study supports the three hypotheses that correlate the three mediating factors and the four indicators of academic development with the exception of the learning-information hypothesis, which contradicts the study. Harborg (1995) studied the anti-school hypothesis, which states that television viewing affects the academics of a child in school. The experimental study was done with the sample of 152 ninth and tenth grade students from a single school. This group was divided on the basis of the amount of television viewing, classified as light, medium, and heavy viewing. The study analyzed the student report data by measuring the time spent on homework, after school employment, and educational ambition, using a questionnaire. It also studied the students’ educational attitude and stimulation using a LASSI- HS scale, along with the Likert response scale; to measure the self esteem related to school performance, a self-perception profile for adolescents was used using SPPS, and to examine the difference in measures, the ANOVA (analysis of variation) method was used. The results showed that a variation in the amount of time spent watching television does have an effect on the academic achievements of children. The study further shows that there is a significant negative correlation between television viewing and the socioeconomic status of the subjects, there was, however, no other correlation witnessed between the amount of viewing television and other variables. An experimental research study done by Shejwal and Purayidathil (2006), involving 368 boys and 286 girls from four different higher secondary schools, shows the negative correlation between television viewing and academic achievement. The purpose of the study was to prove the hypothesis of the author, which was that there exists a negative correlation between television viewing and academic achievement in children. Moreover, it was asserted that this negative correlation existed between television viewing and the cognitive skills of mathematical reasoning, that this poor performance in academics was more visible in heavy viewers than light viewers, and that no gender difference existed in this effect on performance in academics and mathematical reasoning. The method of measurement was the examination of the test scores of the subjects to observe their academic development, a test of cognitive processes for measuring their mathematical reasoning, and a correlation analysis to see the correlation between television viewing and academic achievement and mathematical reasoning. Though the results showed that there was a negative relation between television viewing and academic achievement in both genders, it showed that there was no difference in television viewing amongst the two genders. Further, the group mean showed that girls scored better, academically, than boys and boys scored more in mathematical reasoning than girls. Bacon (2001) used the television as an instructional tool for an introductory psychology course. The purpose of the research was to examine the effectiveness of television in the instruction of the psychological course as compared to traditional teaching using the quasi- experimental study. In the first quarter, 83 undergraduate students received instructions in the traditional setting. In the second quarter, there were 2 groups; one receiving instruction through the live ITV (with the instructor) and the other group was receiving instruction through ITV remote (without an instructor). The results were measured by observing the attrition rate, attendance, performance, and attitudes. The results showed that though there was no difference in the performance amongst the three groups, there were differences in the participation and attendance of the students: the traditional setting had more attendance than both the other groups. A quasi-experimental study was undertaken by Linebarger and Piotrowski (2009) to see how different television programs develop story knowledge and improve narrative skills in children. A total of 311 preschool children attending the childcare center were divided into 4 different groups, with each group put in a particular condition. The four different conditions were: no exposure to television, expository viewing, exposure to embedded narrative stories, and exposure to traditional narrative stories. To evaluate the results, child outcome measures were adopted to test their story knowledge and narrative skills. The results showed that the embedded and traditional narrative story viewers scored higher than the expository and non-viewers. For evaluating the narrative skills, narrative involvement, retelling, explicit comprehension and implicit comprehension were measures. The results for the narrative retelling and narrative comprehension explicit showed the same results with the embedded viewers scoring highest, followed by expository viewers; the traditional viewers scored the lowest of all. However, for narrative involvement, all the groups scored the same, and for the narrative comprehension implicit, traditional viewer’s scores improved and scores of the rest of the three groups declined at the same time. A longitudinal study was done by Ennemoser and Schneider, over a period of four years, to investigate the long-term effects of television (including educational and entertainment programs) on the various components of reading achievement (2007). There were two groups involved in the study, one consisted of young children who were in their last year of kindergarten, and the second group consisted of children in the second grade. Parents kept detailed records of the time children spent on television and other extra curricular activities for the whole day in 15 minutes intervals. The results showed the different effects of the educational and entertainment aspects of television; results showed that not only was there a curvilinear relationship between heavy viewing of television and achievement, but a negative correlation between the viewing of entertainment program as compared to educational programs also existed. Hancox, Milne, and Poulton did a longitudinal survey research to examine the effects of television viewing from childhood to adolescence on the educational achievement of children (2005). The starting sample group consisted of 1,037 children, with the first assessment being done at the age of 3. Data analysis was done at the age of 5, then 7, 9, and 11, which consisted of reports from parents about their children’s television viewing amount on weekdays. At the age of 13 and 15 years, a self report was given by the children about the amount of television they viewed on weekdays and weekends. To evaluate the behavior of 5 years old children, a Rutter’s behavioral scale for children, encompassing a questionnaire for parents and teachers, was employed. The intelligence of the children, aged 7, 9, 11 and 13, was tested using a Wechsler intelligence scale. The results show that there is a negative correlation between the amount of television viewing in childhood, and adolescence, and on the attainment of educational qualification. Gentzkow and Shapiro did a survey, starting from 1948 to 1954, when television was introduced (2008). A heterogeneous sample of 567,148 students was taken, with the study more focused on children in grades 6, 9 and 12 in 1965. Following the survey, an exam was given to see the results. The results showed a positive correlation between television and the marks scored by those children. It also showed that non-white children, whose mother were not well- qualified, as well as non-English speaking children, benefited more on the verbal, reading and general knowledge scores when exposed to television as compared to the other children. The finding supported the view that television is most beneficial to the children with least parental human capital. Discussion and Analysis Television is the most powerful media, which has a great impact on the development of children. It is a media which is ubiquitous in the lives of children around the world. It has been a great concern for parents, teachers, and policy makers with regard to the effect it has on the development of children. The recent survey found that children of 8 to 18 years of age spend an average of 3 hours watching television per day and children younger than that age group spend about an hour of watching television. Though the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children younger than 2 not be exposed to television, researches show that 59% of this age group watches television, or is made to watch it, on a daily basis. (Chernin & Linebarger, 2005) Since a large number of children is watching television, it is of immense value to find out the effects it has on the academic achievement of these children. The aim of this research is to examine the effect that the television has on the academic achievement of children, and what studies done in this regard have shown thus far. The information gleaned from this study will give us the positive and negative aspects of television as related to the school achievement of the children. As stated before, many studies have been undertaken to evaluate the impact of television on children’s achievement from the time television was invented. There are various hypotheses regarding the effect(s) of television on children. Stimulation hypothesis discusses the positive influences of television and the reduction hypothesis discusses the negative effects of television. Another theory, in this regard, is that of time displacement; this theory describes that television takes time away from homework, study and leisure reading. It states that television is such an attractive and powerful mode of entertainment that it takes time away from intellectual activities (Shin, 2004). In contrast, the stimulation hypothesis discusses the educational aspect of the television. There are various researches that show that educational television can, and does, have a positive impact on the children’s achievement. Young children learn the necessary vocabulary to enter preschool. It prepares children for preschool by helping teach them letter-word skills, number skills, vocabulary and school readiness. It is concluded in this study that the effect of television depends on the content matter than on the number of hours it is viewed (Wright et al., 2001). Another study, on the other hand, suggests that infants and toddlers learn vocabulary better through live demonstration than from the television (Kirkorian et al., 2008). There are studies that hypothesized that television has a great impact on the reading of the children. There is no doubt that, nowadays, the time that the children are spending in front of the television instead of a book has had a negative effect on their academic achievement in this regard. There are researches that also show where an educational viewing of television has had a positive effect, however, a study has shown that the children watching entertainment shows score low on reading speed and reading comprehension (Ennemoser & Schneider, 2007). In another study, though, it was discussed that important topics discussed on television can stimulate the children enough for them to delve into literature; this assertion was not proved, however. It also stated that television can inspire children to reading if they watched a television program they enjoyed, discussing books. Moreover, it also stated that the subtitles on television programs could improve the reading speed of the children (Ennermoser and Schneider, 2007). The question is: what about the various programs that do not have any such subtitles. In the study done by Linebarger and Piotrowski (2009), discussed above, television was used as a storyteller to see the impact of television on the story knowledge and narrative style of preschool children. In this study, the children were divided into four groups, depending upon how much television they were allowed to watch. The results showed that children exposed to both the narrative style performed well as compared to expository condition and non-viewers. There is, however, a limitation to this study: the time of the assessment is not mentioned. As this study is done with preschool children, it should be kept in mind that these children have a weak willpower and low attention spans as compared to the elementary school children. It is, thus, very important to know the time of the study. It could be possible that time might have accounted for the change in results. There is no evidence of the stratification of samples, something that is very important for the results to be generalized to the wider population. Another question to be asked would be: how can we compare the different kinds of narrative stories with the non-viewers. It is obvious that the non-viewers will score less. If the non-viewers were compared, then they must have been given a chance to listen to live narrative stories to come to accurate results. As the home environment of the children was not taken into consideration in the analysis, the difference in results might have been the result of a difference in home environments. Also, parents during the time of analysis may have read narrative books that might have accounted for the change in results. There have been researches that show the negative effect of childhood television viewing, which results in poor educational performance in adulthood. The studies show that the participants between the age of 5 and 11 watched 2.06 hours of television on weekdays; at the age of 13 and 15, they watched an average of 3.13 hours of television on weekdays. The viewing time was connected with the possibility of the subject attaining no formal qualification and/or a lower chance of obtaining a university degree at the age of 25. Though this study discusses the possibility, there is no evidence that the participants had not finished the qualification (Hancox, Milne & Poulton, 2005). In contrast, another study was done on preschool television viewing and a comparison of it to the test scores of adolescents revealed that there was an average raise of standardized test score of children who watched television by a 0.02 standard deviation. It was also found that the children from average to low income families, non-whites, and those whose primary language was not English scored more on the reading and general knowledge score. Thus, this study clearly showed that the background of the children watching television also has an impact on their achievement. The study also stated that television viewing has a negative impact on those children whose home environment is conductive to learning (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2008). This study has limitations; the most important factor that the research does not mention is what kind of television the children were viewing. It may be possible that the children who scored more were watching educational television, and that might have accounted for the change in results. Another point noted is that programs from 1965 were not as cognitively demanding as they are today. The study by Ennemoser and Schneider (2008) suggests that the children who were read to by their parents in the early years, tend to watch less television, as compared to the children who were not read to by their parents. In the study done on second grade students, it was demonstrated that the children who owned a bedroom television scored less on the Stanford achievement test in math, reading and language area. The children who owned a bedroom television set watched about 12.8 hours of television per week, which was more when compared to the children who did not have a bedroom television set, and who watched it 10.7 hours per week (Borzekowski & Robinson, 2005) There are studies that show that the type of programming children watch can have more negative impact than having children not watch television at all. The study shows that the children who watch non-educational cartoons underperformed when compared to the non-viewers. The same was seen with the general audience program (Wright et al., 2001) Parents use the television as a cheap baby sitter. Early exposure to television should be avoided; an experimental research was done on infants to find out if television had any effect on the learning of infants using a novel touch screen technology. Various conditions were presented to the infants as three dimensional objects. It was hoped that the infants would imitate the same condition, which would demonstrate their learning. The results showed that infants learnt more from the live demonstration than from the televised demonstration (Zack, Barr, Gerhardstein, Dickerson & Meltzoff, 2009). There are researches that support the results of this study: children younger than 2 years of age learn more from real life experience than from video, as these children do not comprehend the symbolic nature of television until they reach the preschool age. Children cannot discriminate between television and real life until the age of 3. It is believed that early exposure to television may be associated with poorer cognitive skills (Kirkorian, Wartella & Anderson, 2008). Television is also used as an educational tool for delivering various directives for learning; in the quasi-experimental study done by Bacon and Jakovich (2001) the traditional teaching format was compared with the ITV format for the introduction of a psychology course to see the effectiveness of the instructions. The results showed that there were similar outcomes in both kinds of instructions. It has been noted in one of the studies that there mat be a difference in the effects of television viewing between the genders; in the study, done by Shejwal and Purayidathil (2006), it was demonstrated that the girls scored less in the mathematical reasoning as compared to boys, though there was a negative correlation in the performance of boys in mathematical reasoning as well. Both genders showed a negative correlation between television viewing and academic development. It was also found that the heavy television viewing children, scored low irrespective of their gender, when compared to the light television viewing children (Shejwal & Purayidathil, 2006). One of the limitations of this study is that there was no stratification of samples, which is the core component to generalizing the results to the wider population. One of the factors consistently noted in most of the studies is that television has an impact on the concentration of children. The frequent changes in scene and content cause the attention deficit problem in children (Ennermoser & Schneider, 2007; Kirkorian, Wartella & Anderson, 2008). No recent study shows the correlation between the two, though the research states that it does have an impact on the ability to focus on a given task by the children. It was noted that late night television viewing by children results in poor sleep patterns, which badly affects their performance in school (Shejwal & Purayidathil, 2006) Another factor that has been consistently noted in all the studies is the relation between the socioeconomic status and family background of the children and the effect of television on their academic achievement. It was perceived from most of the studies that the children from low socioeconomic backgrounds tended to spend more time watching television than the children from better socioeconomic backgrounds, which resulted in low performance of the former, with the exception of one study, which asserts that children from higher SES quintiles score less than those with lower SES (Linda, 2006). Moreover, in many studies the sample was taken from Low SES in the determining the effects of television, as it was stated that such families watch more television than the others (Wright et al., 2001). In the study done by Harborg (1995), there was a seemingly significant correlation between the SES and television viewing time. It was also noted that the children from low SES tended to have less positive attitude and motivation towards school. Another study stated that the correlation between television viewing and poor educational achievement was influenced by the socio-economic status of the children (Hancox, Milne & Poulton, 2005). Television is also taken as an instrument for spreading internationalism; in the globalized world of today, it is very important that today’s generation learn about different cultures and broadens their horizon. A research states that Sesame Street, a popular educational show, has launched its own brand of social revolution called Global Grover. In this show, children get the opportunity to learn about different cultures and their values, along with respect for and appreciation of other cultures, as well as being sensitive to the differences. This intercultural knowledge is very important for the new generation. By doing this, television acts as a teacher: teaching the values of internationalism to the children (Wartella & Knell, 2004). Though Global Grover is said to have a positive effect on children, the study done by Espinosa, Laffey, Whittaker and Sheng, (2006) stated that watching Sesame Street prior to kindergarten, resulted in children scoring less in math than those who did not watch it (Linda, 2006). It is unclear as to whether the score dropped because of watching Sesame Street or the children’s exposure to television at young age. Nearly every study agreed that what is more important in the viewing of television is not how much television is watched, but what is being watched. Almost all of the studies identified that the content matter is a very important aspect of television viewing. It has been agreed in almost all the studies that the educational programs have a positive impact on children’s social and cognitive skills. It is stated that the content matter is a strong predictor of the educational outcomes of the children. Parent mediation on the kinds of shows that the children watch can positively influence the children. (Chernin & Linebarger, 2005; Kirkorian, Wartella & Anderson, 2008; Wright et al., 2001) Conclusion The current research concludes that there is a strong impact of television on the achievement of children. The positive or negative depend on the content matter. From the studies of all the scholars reviewed, it can be concluded that educational television programs, watched after the age of 3, can be an aid in academic achievement. Another important factor is that heavy viewers of television are negatively correlated to lower academic achievement in all age groups. Parents can mediate to create a positive effect of television viewing by not only choosing the right show for their children but also by creating an opportunity for discussion while viewing, so that there is more of an active role for the children to play. Most of the studies done were quantitative in nature; a qualitative research should be done exploring the effect of heavy viewing of educational television programs on the academic achievement of children, so that the parents, teachers and policy makers can get an idea of how much of the television is beneficial for the children with regards to a time frame, and not content. Future studies should be done on the awareness of the parents about the effects of television, and the methods through which the parents can be best educated about the effects of television on the achievement of the children. Future studies should examine the effects of television by having two variables. 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