Unable to appease a nine-month daughter, mommy turns to the blue screen. And, what a miracle! — the child begins to smile. Grandmother is happy now, thinking that the child is so small, and already understands everything. However, this is still not a good reason to let the child watch TV. Scientists do not children recommended the children under three years of age even to stay close to the TV! Why? How is love of TV reflected in child health and psyche?
The ability to make decisions
In real life, the little man learns everything is a game – he chooses the role of doctor or nurse, dad or mom and simulates life situations and finds solutions. With TV, everything is different: the child observes the relationship of the movie characters or cartoons, but he is deprived of the opportunity to choose — everything is already decided for him and a finished product is offered. Besides, in the form of harmless cartoons from the screen, children can learn and replace the ancient human values. After analyzing the popular adventures of Shrek, scientists claim that this cartoon gives children the wrong stereotypes of behavior of men and women. The Duke, who must always be the hero, in the cartoon is weak and frail. Everybody is waiting for tenderness and femininity from the Princess, however, she is strong and courageous.
Fear and aggression
Even if the family has strict accounting of television hits, parents should pay attention to the innocent, it would seem, movies. According to statistics, more than half of all broadcast scenes of violence (57%) can be found in movies. If a child regularly sees them on TV, his emotional development gets violated, as well as capacity for compassion and empathy. Children in school are often bullies, and as teenagers they risk of getting into criminal troubles. Every third pupil, who saw a minute scene of some horror on the TV, has the sense of fear (not always visible!) remained for several minutes, and even hours. Such a child may suffer from neurosis, insomnia, increased anxiety.
The sense of time
The results of experimental studies have shown that if a child spends a lot of time in front of the TV, it slows down the perception of duration of minutes — his subjective minute is more than 60 seconds up to a loss of sense of time and loss of reality. In addition, TV time is very rich, dynamic, events succeed each other with great speed, in a short time viewers live multiple lives — "for himself and for that guy". Participation in the bright TV story is tempting, but the reality compared to it is boring. This can lead to addiction.
Speech
The more time is devoted to TV, less and less is available to communicate with parents, friends, animals. According to Kirkorian (2009), children that spend more than three hours a day in front of the TV, have delays in speech development. The reason is, they believe that the child's mind when watching the program is more focused on visualization than verbalization. Studies have proved that children are easier to retell what is heard than seen (Anderson, 2005). According to U.S. pediatricians If the child of preschool age watches TV for one hour every day, the risk of memory impairment is increased by 10%. According to statistics, many children at the age of two years spend more than 10 hours a week on watching TV! 20% of the surveyed nine-month-old babies whose parents used the TV as a babysitter, have a delay of physical development. If amount of time spent on watching TV is not reduced, the majority of children by the age of three years will be lagged behind in development for a year and their further development is also under threat (AAP, 2011).
Movement
Motion is life! And for the child is the natural state of the body. While watching cartoons/shows, the muscular system is in static (frozen) state. And remains there as long as the child sits in front of the screen. This may result in muscle clamps and blocks, and if the baby is systematically watching TV in incorrect posture, normal development of the skeletal system is in danger. And parents, of course, will blame their child’s school teacher for the scoliosis. The second side effect of prolonged views — possible state of excitement and irritability. So, the nervous system compensates downtime increased activity. Or, on the contrary, after a long TVsession the child will have retarded reactions — this is due to the change of consciousness, a trance.
Vision
When children look at the real object, the eye muscles are constantly training, as if they are "feeling" it. With TV it's the opposite. The paradox of perception of the television image: the image on the screen is moving, and eye muscles don’t. While watching TV there is a noticeable decrease in the activity of the eyes.
The brain
The flow of information from the TV screen far exceeds the ability of the child to perceive and handle it. The baby grabs one thing after another, often without having to associate an image with accompanying text. The brain is sketchy, associative. The child cannot check the relation of these thoughts with reality. This affects the delicate nerve processes in the brain.
The baby is formed as the passive instrument of mental activity and incapable of active creative thinking. A child who grew up in such conditions, in adult life is always waiting for that required information to come from the outside. He is almost unable to independently generate own ideas and judgments. Moreover, man has no desire for this. But a critical attitude to the environment, susceptibility to judgmental assessment of the circumstances in these children is strong. It is known that creative thinking develops only on the basis of their activity, attention, lively interest in the real world.
The TV and computer have a role to play in the child's life only after completion of the volitional and emotional development, that is, until 13-15 years. The effect of television and computer for children up to 12-13 years of age reveals the following features of their personal qualities:
• speech as a way of communication remains primitive;
• the ability to allocate the main meaning of the text is reduced;
• the child practically does not read, but he likes to look at pictures (comic books);
• active processing of what the child sees or reads. Therefore, the development of the ability to concentrate, careful observation, creativity, purposeful activity is delayed;
• in the future, stimulated by an addiction to alcohol, toxic - and drug addiction as a teenager, the child will like doing nothing, or applying a minimum standard of effort (computer games);
• development of will is violated because the child is sitting in front of a screen.
• after watching TV or playing on the computer the child is aggressive and disordered.
It is important to remember that everything that surrounds the child in childhood, determines all his subsequent life.
References
Anderson, D.R. & Pempek, T.A. (January 2005). Television and very young children. American Behavioral Scientist, 48(5), 505-522.
Kirkorian, H.L., Pempek, T.A., Murphy, L.A., Schmidt, M.E., Anderson, D.R. (2009). The impact of background television on parent-child interaction. Child Development. (80). 1350-1359.
American Academy of Pediatrics. (2011). Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years. PEDIATRICS, 128(5), 1040-1045. http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-1753
