The effects of television on children's intelligence and education Essay

The effects of television on children's intelligence and education - Essay Example The negative influence of television on children has by far outpaced the positive sides of the television programs. Shaffer indicates that students and children who spend much of their time watching television becomes inactive an inattentive in school (9). This effect attributes to the low concentration span of children that would have exhausted in the process of watching television. BBC cites that watching television also allows individual children very little time to interact with others thus becoming less social. Lack of social interaction among children denies the individual child precious opportunity to explore and think about forces that act on the environment and thus the retard cognitive development. This further lowers the level of creativity of an individual child leading to poor critical thinking and performance when it comes to class activities and assignments. Long hours of exposure to loud noises emanating from television and overconcentration of television programs have led to poor attention in class especially when there is background noise. Watching television makes individual children adapt to visual images that move at fast paces, and may distract their attention when it comes to class work. According to Gunter and McAleer, adaptation on fast-paced visual television pictures may also affect listening skills of an individual child considering their exposure to picture communication rather than vocal communication (14). Some television programs that involve violence and commercial shows involving advertisements of alcoholic products may convince an individual child to start leading immoral life. The diversion of child’s mentality to alcoholic products and violent activities may have very negative impact on the intellectuality of individual child. As pointed by Shaffer, watching television becomes addictive to children who would want to spend much