Tv Entertainment

Television entertainment programs have become a very popular form of mass media. In America, children spend 16 to 17 hours watching television every week (Dov et al., 2003). In other western countries like the Netherlands, the number of television viewers increased rapidly from 1980 to 1985 and the time they spent reading declined (Bouman et al., 1998). People argue that television entertainment programs have negative influences on people’s physiological and psychology (Tiggemann & Slater, 2003; Hamer et al., 2009; Kevin & Catherine, 2005). Others, however, mention that television entertainments still have significant impacts on people’s attitudes, knowledge and behaviors (Morgan et al., 2009). In this review, I will examine the influences of television entertainment programs in three aspects: the negative impacts on children’s and adult’s psychology and physiology, impacts on their attitudes and behavior changes, and learning and motivation of general viewers.

Perhaps the most negative impacts of the television entertainment programs are their impacts on people’s physiology and psychology. Hamer et al. (2009) support this view. Their current study aims at examining the relationship between psychological distress, television and screen entertainment (TVSE) time and physical activity in children aged 4 -12. The findings of the research indicate that for younger children at this age, there is a high rate of psychological distress, which is interacted by the large amount of time spent watching TVSE and the resulting laziness in taking physical activity, which is negative to children’s mental and physiological health such as central nervous system and sleep patterns (Hamer et al., 2009). Tiggemann and Slater (2003) agree with Hamer et al.’s argument. They point out that after viewing the information included in some of the entertainment programs, people tend to increase their dissatisfaction to the real situation. These scholars claim that: “The negative effect was...