The effects of television on children's intelligence and education - Essay Example

The Effects of Television on Childrens Intelligence and Education Rapid advancement in technology has driven the world into a global village with increased access to media materials by both children and adults. Television shows have particularly received vehement reception and attention among various individuals across all the age groups. However, the difficult question and probably the main issues that have remained controversial are the effects that such media materials like television shows present to children.

Various empirical research have indicated that television shows have both positive and negative effects on the school going children depending on the contents of the television shows and time of exposure. The negative influence of television on children has by far outpaced the positive sides of the television programs. Shaffer indicates that students and children who spend much of their time watching television becomes inactive an inattentive in school (9). This effect attributes to the low concentration span of children that would have exhausted in the process of watching television.

BBC cites that watching television also allows individual children very little time to interact with others thus becoming less social. Lack of social interaction among children denies the individual child precious opportunity to explore and think about forces that act on the environment and thus the retard cognitive development. This further lowers the level of creativity of an individual child leading to poor critical thinking and performance when it comes to class activities and assignments.

Long hours of exposure to loud noises emanating from television and overconcentration of television programs have led to poor attention in class especially when there is background noise. Watching television makes individual children adapt to visual images that move at fast paces, and may distract their attention when it comes to class work. According to Gunter and McAleer, adaptation on fast-paced visual television pictures may also affect listening skills of an individual child considering their exposure to picture communication rather than vocal communication (14).

Some television programs that involve violence and commercial shows involving advertisements of alcoholic products may convince an individual child to start leading immoral life. The diversion of child’s mentality to alcoholic products and violent activities may have very negative impact on the intellectuality of individual child. As pointed by Shaffer, watching television becomes addictive to children who would want to spend much of their time before television screens while letting little time for homework and school work (11).

This leads to an intellectually impaired child. As much as the negative impacts of television on the education and intellectual of children could be serious, television also helps in developing and improving the intellectual and education of the individual child. Educational and non-violent television shows have helped individual children improve reading and mathematics skills compared (Fisch 15). Some television programs as agricultural and engineering shows are very informative and inspirational as they enable individual child understand processes and factors involved in certain occurrences.

In the views of Langholt, when little children get exposure to educational television programs, they tend to grow as bright students who will indeed score good grades in their future school attendance. In conclusion, television has had both positive and negative effects on the education and intellectual development of children. Negative effects of television on children have overweighed the positive influences. First, watching television becomes very addictive and this will make an individual child spend much of his/her time watching television rather than doing school work.

The visual images that run on television screen are also adaptive and may make a child less active and attentive in class where voice is the only mode of teaching. In addition, some televisions programs involve immoral advertisements that may corrupt a child’s mind and even divert the victim from proper learning to immoral practices. From those perspectives, television is simply not good for child’s education and intellectual development. Works citedBBC News. Childrens progress hit by TV. 2004. Web. .Fisch, Shalom.

Childrens Learning from Educational Television: Sesame Street and Beyond. Mahwah, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2004. Print. Gunter, Barrie and McAleer Jill. Children and Television. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge Publisher, 1998. Print. Langholt, Alice. Positive Effects of Television on Kids. 2012. Web. . Shaffer, David R. Social and Personality Development. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005. Print.