TV VIOLENCE AND CHILDREN

By: JANICE WATSON

I remember when our children came along, our house suddenly became like Fort Knox, a hive of gadgets were rapidly purchased to prevent doors from slamming on tiny fingers, to keep cupboards firmly shut to make sure that household chemicals were safely out of the way, along with any other pills and potions that would hurt them.
But there are other things we have to protect children from which are just as dangerous, I’m talking about TV.

We tell our children about stranger danger, to stay away from people they don’t know and we would never consider inviting a stranger into our homes without checking them out first, your TV in this case is the stranger.

If we allow kid’s to watch TV unsupervised, without thinking about it’s long-term effects upon them It’s little wonder that violence is increasing. We can’t wrap them in cotton wool of course, but by choosing carefully what we allow them to watch we give them higher standards and a better moral compass.

TV does have its good points, there are the educational programmes for example just be aware what they are being educated about.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

JANICE WATSON OF MIDLIFE MISFIT (A RECORD OF MY HORMONAL SHENANIGANS AND MIDLIFE OBSERVATIONS.)
Janice, is a middle-aged woman, but "dripping with hormones"(according to her). She has a zest to write about a wide range of topics. She writes about heaven, fathers, animals , flour etc. (see how varied her topics are?) She discusses her topic simply, but very well.

She says and I quote :

"If you are a man who has accidentally stumbled upon this hornets nest
of "women's speak" . . . may the force be with you. "

Unquote.

Thanks, Janice for supporting the campaign. More power to you.

UNDERSTANDING THE BAD EFFECTS OF TELEVISION ON OUR CHILDREN

Just like any other invention, television was created to be useful to mankind. It gives us immediate information and a good form of entertainment especially for our children.

This prevents them from leaving the house which makes them safer. Not to mention that it still does not cost much. Nothing can take its place even now that we are in the computer age.

But television has also its negative effects on our children.

Here are some of them that we as responsible parents should be aware of:

Laziness in school

This is not a surprise to me if your child is a TV addict How to avoid your Child to be a TV Addict. Although he might be going to school regularly, his mind is full of thoughts about his favorite show that is not really suited for him.

He will start to loose his interest in his studies which will eventually lead to laziness. He will spend more hours in front of the TV rather than reviewing his notes. His excitement in going to school will be replaced by the enjoyment he is getting from these shows.

You must teach your child how to balance his time well.

Negative behavior

There are other possible behavior changes other than lost of interest in school. Being violent is another major negative effect. This is because violence is also present in some cartoon and superhero type of shows.

For a young boy, imitating a superhero is nothing but normal. But it differs when he does the action. Superhero in cartoon shows are now different, not only in their attire or appearance but also in the weapons that they use.

Showing disrespect and early awareness of sex can also manifest in our child. This is because of the language and romantic scenes that are not being regulated properly.

Neglect of Health

Watching TV can also make your child lose his appetite in his food. That is why you should not watch while eating. It will divert his focus - and worst of all; your child may skip his meals.

Since your child is spending long hours in front of the TV, exercise will also be taken for granted. His time in running, walking and other daily physical activities will be reduced. In addition, he will not get enough sleep if we will not limit his watching time. Since we are working the whole day, we might not notice that we are neglecting the health of our child.

There may be other bad influences our child can absorb from watching television, but one thing is for sure we must control them.

Stricter rules for television shows should be implemented by the government but show producers and the TV industry should cooperate.

We as parents have also a major responsibility. We should be the first ones to take full control of our children. We can only do this if we give extra care to them by monitoring their daily activities very closely.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guardian Angel of- Happy Family Matters is a Filipino engineer who found himself more comfortable in writing letters instead of numbers; and interacting with humans rather than machines. He maintains two very succesful blogs and does well with both of them.

For more effective parenting tips, successful marriage tips and other family issues, please feel free to visit his blog at Happy Family Matters , and for successful blogging and blogging tips read his very informative posts at Humane Blogging Tips.

The Effects of Media Violence on Children

Image from : The Effects of Media Violence on Children

THIS ARTICLE EXPLAINS VERY CLEARLY HOW VIOLENCE CAN AFFECT CHILDREN. DO VISIT THE SITE AND READ THE VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES THE AUTHOR HAD RAISED.

A Campaign For Nonviolence On Television

By: Mel Avila Alarilla

Children are vulnerable to what they see on television. Since they are in their formative years, whatever they see and learn from television, become a foundation in their lives.

Good or bad, they affect the future behavior of the children. Sex and violence must be banned on television for they leave seeds of evil in the young minds of our kids. How many times have we seen or heard massacres being perpetrated by youngsters at their school campuses because of the culture of violence that was inculcated in their minds when they were still young and vulnerable.


Photo by: Bogdan Suditu

Television must instead be a main source of educational, moral and motivational medium to develop and nurture kids to be peace loving and law abiding citizens of their countries. They should bring back TV shows like Sesame Street and the Muppet Show to give kids, not only entertainment but also, lessons in character formation and values.

Let us all become united in our efforts to force a ban on sex and violence on television and bring back the glory days of television as a medium for developing citizens who are good, honest and law abiding.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mel Avila Alarilla of Random Thoughts- International Blog is a multi-blogger. He successfully maintains 6 blogs!! He is a Christian who has the zest to write, read and share his dynamic ideas and beautiful thoughts about life, love, trivia, spirituality and just about anything under the sun.

Mel thank you for taking time out from your blogs, to write this admirable article for my campaign.

More power to you!

You can visit Mel in his following blogs below:

Reflections - A Christian Blog

Random Thoughts (International Blog)

World United Bloggers

Points of View (Discussion Blog)

Literati - An Artistic Blog

K.I.S.S. - Keep It Short and Simple

TV VIOLENCE AND YOUR CHILDREN

By: Tony Fowler

I remember the days when the violence controversy on TV was Wiley Coyote getting blown-up, flattened and buried over and over again as he unsuccessfully tried to make the Roadrunner his dinner.

Surprisingly enough, I have heard people use violence on cartoons as a reason to downplay the current violence on TV. It's crazy, but we'll use illogical arguments if they help relieve our own conscience.

So what is the big deal about violence on TV? It's just make-believe. Most kids know it is all make-believe. Sure there are rare examples of kids copying the violence they see and hurting other people.

Photographer: Ian Britton, Freetfoto.com

However, a case could be made that those troubled kids would have acted violently with or without exposure to violence on TV.

I'm not a psychologist. If you want psychological proof, there are plenty of studies that show that violence on TV negatively affects our children.

However, I am a parent and common sense tells me there is a problem with the level of violence on TV today.

Our brains take pictures of everything we see. Once we see it, it's there forever. We may forget it way back in our subconscious but its there. Remember the horror movies you've seen. Close your eyes and picture the violent scenes. Does that bring back happy memories? Are those the thoughts you want prancing through your head as you go to sleep tonight?

The problem is that the violence on TV does much more than leave your child with scary pictures and nightmares. It makes your child immune to the tragedy of violence, which leads to the loss of compassion for the real violence in this world. If I'm not a psychologist, how do I know this? Because it happened to me.

Growing up I watched just about anything I wanted. Violence on the news was just as artificial to me as violence on my favorite TV shows. My heart did not break when I saw tragedy around me. It was as surreal as prime-time TV.

A couple of years ago we made a decision to not have any TV (cable, satellite or network) in our house. You can kid yourself as a parent but the truth is that if you have cable TV, your kids are going to watch shows you do not want them to watch.

My wife and I have noticed now that we are much more sensitive to tragedy in the news and the plight of those in our world not sheltered like we are in suburbia. Our heart breaks more for those in need. Real life has become more real.

This is what TV can steal from your children. Not just with violence but with sex and off-color humor as well. If your children are immersed in pseudo life-like make believe, they'll lose their heart to care for reality.

Let's not fill our children's minds with what is violent and hurtful. Let's fill our children's minds with what is true, honorable, just, lovely, commendable, excellent and worthy of praise.

Philippians 4:8 (ESV)

⁸ Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

About the author:

Tony Fowler of Seeking Things Above, works as an executive in a large computer company. He is married to a wonderful woman and has 4 "awesome kids".

I was enchanted of how he described himself so I decided to copy an excerpt instead of his "about me" page from his blog:

Start of excerpt:

"Now you know everything you need, right?



Let me dig a little deeper and see if I can stretch my machismo a bit and give you little more. After all, on most of these blog pages I’m bearing my soul; why not provide a little more insight on the famous “About Me” page.

My name is Tony but then I already told you that. I’m an executive of a large private computer company. I don’t do any programming (hence the struggles with finding a good blog template and no clue how to get Google to see my blog) but I do get to help think of really cool stuff for our programmers to work on.

I try to make God the priority in my life. I often fail miserably at this but I pick myself up and keep on seeking. I have a beautiful wife and I don’t mind if I told you that twice now. We’re going on 12 years of marriage and I love her more each year. She’s a great Christian sister as well and we work to keep each other accountable.

Our kids are all less than two years apart in age. Three of them are home-schooled with the fourth ready to start next year. I don’t know if we will home-school all the way through high school for each of them. We’ll be counting on God to guide us on this as we go.

I’m an Aggie (Texas A&M former student for those of you outside of this great state). This means I love Aggie football which means I usually have my share of heartaches each fall. However, each year I bounce back ready to give it another go.

I’ve felt called to write biblical social commentaries on the net since the internet first became popular. However, until the advent and popularity of blogging and social networking I never had the time or technical know-how to make it happen."

I don’t know if God will use my blogs to touch anyone. However, that’s not my concern to worry about. I’ll just blog and let God take care of the rest."

End of excerpt:

Well said Tony, I am highly appreciative of Tony 's desire to contribute his article to this blog.

People like him are gems on the face of the earth. Men who deeply care about others and who have a burning desire to spread the good word. May your tribe increase, Tony!

Accept my heartfelt gratitude.

Write an Article About How TV Violence Can Affect Children and Earn 1,000 EC Credits

MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TO WRITE AN ORIGINAL ARTICLE ABOUT THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF TV VIOLENCE ON CHILDREN AND EARN AN EASY 1,000 ENTRECARD CREDITS.


This is NOT a contest , all submissions will be accepted and awarded 1,000 EC credits EACH.

THE CRITERIA ARE:

1. You must be an Entrecarder.

2. The article must be original, if you use quotations from other authors, you must acknowledge your sources.

3. The topic must talk about the negative effects of TV violence on children.

4. It maybe a poem, an essay, a short story, or a personal experience.

5. Drawings will be accepted too, but there should be a brief explanation of what the picture portrays.

JOIN NOW!
Let's makes the world a safer place for our children, and our children's children.

If you want to send an entry, send a message to my EC card and I will get back to you; or just leave a comment IN THIS POST and I will send my email through your EC dashboard.

Thank you.

LEARN WHY TV HAS MORE SIGNIFICANT EFFECTS THAN MOVIES.

Based on a study edited by C. Kay Weaver and Cynthia Carter, “ An American child is born into a home in which television is on average of more than 7 hours a day. For the first time in human history, most of the stories about people, life, and values are told not by parents, schools, churches, or others in the community who have something to tell, but by a group of distant conglomerates that have something to sell. ” . This statistic is derived from an American study, nevertheless; it reflects also the viewing culture of children around the world, including the Philippines..

If this is the case, then it has more influence than movies and books. The growing child is exposed to this medium more than 7 hours a day - day in and day out, and while it is true that parents could supervise their children’s proper TV viewing, oftentimes parents fail in this endeavor due to several reasons.

One of the main reasons is poverty. One of the most common forms of entertainment for poor families at home - is the TV. This is because it is relatively cheap to maintain. You spend only once when you buy it and then it takes minimal expenses for its long term use.

Sometimes, both uneducated parents scrounge for a living, and leave the eldest to take care of his/her siblings. The only desire of the eldest child would be to keep her siblings safe inside the house while she does the household chores, and TV is how she can do it. That is why a TV set is one of the most popular forms of entertainment for low income families. They would try all ways and means to at least buy a TV even if it’s the smallest screen. Even in families belonging to the upper economic strata, this scenario happens too under the household help’s indulgence.

In some cases, parents are at home, while the child is watching; but because they don’t consider the effects of TV violence significant, they just leave the child unsupervised, not aware that their child’s character formation is taking place, right then and there. Whether we accept it or not, we do oftentimes ignore to supervise the TV programs that our children watch.

The effects of watching violence day in and day out, (even from cartoons) may not be instant. The term Weaver used to portray this gradual formation is “cultivation”. “Television tends to cultivate and confirm stable conceptions about life.”

If the local TV industry continues to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to these issues, just to maintain their high TV ratings, then the country’s moral fiber will continue to deteriorate as years go by. The children who are watching television now will be the future citizens and leaders of our country. What will be inculcated in their growing minds - if rampant violence on TV continues to prevail - would be the notion that violence is the only solution to problems.

We may not live long enough to witness the chaos that violence causes in the lives of our children, grandchildren and our great grandchildren; but would we be happy to die knowing that we did not do anything to avert this future occurrence? That we were silent witnesses to the process which brought them there?

Let your voice be heard! Do not be among the silent majority!

Do sign my guest book to support my campaign!

I assure you, I won’t be asking for any donation or too personal information.