Effect of TV viewing on mental health of secondary students

The corrosive nature of television’s effect on childhood intellect has grown up in the
recent years. As we all see, television is playing a very big role in our everyday life.
Television can be entertaining and educational, and can open up the new worlds for
children, giving them a chance to travel the globe, learn about different cultures, and
gain exposure to the ideas they may never encounter in their own community. However,
parents need to understand the negative influence of children’s TV, because children
are likely to learn things from TV that parents don’t want them to ever learn. Television
can affect children’s health, school work and behavior in various negative ways.
Excess television viewing can influence the children’s physical and mental health. On
one hand, it could affect badly the physical health. It is easy for the children to be
myopic if they watch TV more than two hours a day. Children will end up spending less
time on sports and TV takes away from physical participation in sports, music, art or
other activities that require practice to become skillful. And they may have high caloric
intake if they are watching TV during dinner.
Many study found that TV viewing before age three slightly hurt several measures of
later brain development. Before the age of three, children’s brain develops rapidly,
forming connections and pathways that will assist with learning later in the life. Studies
indicate that exposure to television, with its fast-moving images and rapid actions,
actually rewires children’s brain to crave such hyperactive stimulation. In this case,
children may be frightened or upset by the TV stories easily, and the symptoms include
bad dreams, anxious feelings, afraid of being alone, withdrawing from friends, and
missing school.
TV viewing may replace activities such as reading, doing homework, pursuing hobbies,
and getting enough sleep. First, it makes the children read fewer books and have lower
grades in school as most time is lost watching TV. Watching TV at age four is one factor
to be associated with bulling in grade school. Second, children develop more seeing
than thinking. It prevents children from the development of their imagination and
creativity. Watching more TV in childhood increases the chances of dropping out of
school and decreased chances of getting a college, even after various controlling for
confounding factors.
Children who watch more sensitive TV may have various behavior problems. They
would imitate the violence they see on TV. Programs designed for children often contain
violence than the adult TV. Young children may even try to emulate the things they see
on TV, not realizing the fact that they risk injuring themselves or others.
In summary, television viewing affects the children’s physical and mental health, school
performance and behavior in the negative ways. Therefore, children should replace their
TV time with creative and physical activities, reading and playing games with more
positive values and quality educational content.