TV is Not for Children
by Bella C. Tan, 1994
Television is one important element in the development of the Filipino consciousness.. However, television has been taken for granted as benign. While it has been originally conceived as an instrument to improve communication and wider dissemination of information, or simply showing movies at home, the intensity and variety of its potentially negative impacts can no longer be ignored.
Of special concern is its effects on younger children, seven years below, who still need to mature physically and psychologically. There is no doubt that TV has become a major part of our life. For many, it has become a habit or an addiction. Almost every Filipino home has at least one TV set, which partakes in more than five hours of the household members’ daily routine. It has become a main vehicle of continued westernization of habits, values, and thinking. What TV does to us is indeed a matter worth a closer look.
TV Content
The most widely studied, discussed and reported aspect of television is the negative influence of its programs, including commercials. For example, researches have shown that obesity can be caused by consumption of food advertised on TV.
Violence also predominates TV shows including cartoons (an average of 6-8 acts of violence per hour). As a result, children become more aggressive and harmful towards others. They resort to violence as a way of solving problems. They also become insensitive to the paint and suffering of others.
TV programs often portray authority figures such as parents, teachers, doctors, judges as people with doubts and weaknesses. Children develop the idea that these authorities are not dependable as they ought to be. Because children are still shaping and forming images which will govern their own lifestyle, they begin to feel vulnerable and less protected. Eventually, they adopt an insecure sense of themselves and of the world.
The introduction of grotesque animal-human forms sets up a model counter to the human being’s archetypal mold. These animal-human images deform the fine structures of the physical body, creating a predisposition toward illnesses which will appear later in the children’s life. These grotesque forms degenerate the school children’s powers of creative fancy which can become a repository of animal-like forms. These animal and human caricatures also corrupt the children’s aesthetic judgment, a prerequisite to the comprehension of genuinely artistic works.
Exposure to adult programs eliminates childhood. In the past, learning depended on rites of passage of access to secrets based on one’s ability to read (age-dependent learning). Now, five year olds easily learn about adult behavior through TV programs. If children are required by law to wait until they are old enough to drive, likewise, they need to wait for the right age to watch TV. Television may not be as detrimental for teenagers or for adults, as it is for the young ones.
Younger children perceive the telecast not as a totality but only a sum of individual scenes. They cannot make all the connections portrayed in the program. Their reference points are different from those of adults. It is therefore impractical to show educational and feature films to children, even up to 8-10 years of age.
TV as a Medium
Equally significant is the impact of TV viewing itself, regardless of the content of the show.
Studies have shown that a TV viewer is exposed to approximately twenty-four pictures per second or nearly 90,000 pictures per hour accompanied by intense sound track and alternating color schemes. A young child who gets an average of four to six hours of daily TV viewing develops some kind of tolerance for this. However, the demands on his eyes are enormous, leading to relative stimulation, nervousness, and lack of concentration.
In addition, the peculiarities of TV such as quick camera and scene changes, multiple images, fading-out and close-ups require a great amount of abstraction, analysis, and symbolizing capacity. Unfortunately young children have not yet fully developed these capacities. This premature or untimely demand on dormant abilities weakens or corrupts their full development.
Evidence also highlights the close relationship between early physical development and later learning. TV viewing limits the development of healthy physical bodies. Children lose their chance to enjoy their childhood, repeatedly play games and listen to stories, explore and get to know the real world through direct experience of the light, scent, sound and feel of nature and contact with other people. The quality of sense perceptions and all experimental factors from the environment are significant for the development of a healthy bodily foundation in preschoolers. TV does not allow this healthy, natural process to happen. While they are passively in front of the TV apparatus, children experience the world artificially.
Note also that knowledge is not immediately accessible as they are portrayed on television. Children must exert effort and require lengthy periods of study to attain knowledge that is not immediately apparent. TV viewing contracts the attention span of a child. It hinders the development of patience with details or the skill to work with details. Since everything takes place instantly in television, the child may not develop the patience, drive or tolerance to work with the slower world of home or school. This results in the anti-social atmosphere that predominates after extensive TV watching.
Ever more importantly, television as a medium depresses the creative imagination and the development of the individual’s memory. To illustrate: when a child listens to a story and is asked to retell it, he does not remember specific words or sentences. Rather, he calls to his mind’s eye the pictures or images which he created while he hears the story being told. He remembers the creation of his own activity and retells the story be reading from his picture memory. Through television, the story is conveyed not only by sound but by a sequence of very defined images presented in rapid succession. This presents no challenge to the imagination, but merely requires passive absorption. Therefore, imagination is dulled and becomes less and less available to the child. Just like any other faculty, the creative imagination is atrophied. Memory as a result, remains undeveloped.
TV and the Family
Many parents claim that they allow their children to watch television to prevent them from getting bored. However, it must be recognized that boredom can foster creativity and self-reliance. TV blocks one’s independent creative effort by creating dependency, a trait that can escalate into addiction.
It is a great temptation for housewives and working parents to rely on the TV set to act as a substitute baby-sitter and entertainer. Parents get their work done and still manage to have a quiet rest away from the constantly active children. But isn’t it so that families are meant to be living together, actively relating and interacting with each other, rather than merely watching together?
Turning off the TV allows both parents and their children to face the kind of relationship they have with one another. It is a symbolic act to an evolving commitment to have a more meaningful relationship.