Effects of Children Watching Too Much Television

There are a handful of parents who do not realize that letting their children watch too much television daily or weekly can harm them in the future. The amount of television being watched today by young children can have serious impacts on their health and development. To start, watching too much television can hurt a child’s physical development, in which a child lacks outdoor activities. Such as playing tag, ball and games with friends. Furthermore, watching many hours of television a day can affect a child’s mental development. Television has the power of taking away a child’s ability to use their imagination. Finally, watching television in excess can alter a child’s emotion development by adding aggressive and/or negative behaviors.

Although people may not know it, television can have a huge impact on a child’s physical development. The American Academy of Pediatrics (2001) recommends that “as kids get older, too much screen time can interfere with activities such as being physically active, reading, doing homework, playing with friends, and spending time with family”(p.424). In addition, children who watch too much television are often exposed to poor dietary habits. For example, watching television a child might see an advertisement for a certain kind of food and ask their parents to buy that food and of course the parents do. Another example, many children wants to snack while watching television, often leading to obesity. As noted by Katz and Story (1994) “Children who are overweight by the age of two have a 10% chance of overweight in adulthood. Those who are still overweight by age ten have a 79% chance of overweight in adulthood” (p.296). Looking further into how a child watching too much television leads to bad physical development is the loss of outdoor activity. Children nowadays would rather choose to watch a favorite television show or cartoons instead of include themselves in outdoor activities with their friends or siblings.

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