5 Negative Effects of TV on Your Child

Watching TV can help your child gain exposure to various cultures, stay updated on societal trends, and cure boredom. Despite these benefits, there are still various negative effects of TV that can cause harm to your child's mental well-being. To provide great support to your child, you have to prevent such harm to their well-being. Thus, it will benefit you to know these effects so you can prevent them from happening. One major problem with watching TV is that addiction may set in, leading to prolonged sitting in front of the TV. This easily translates into less physical activity, increasing the likelihood of becoming obese. Your child may also find it hard to learn. Since they are spending more time in front of the TV, they will have less time to focus on learning activities. Similarly, they will be used to the conversation styles on the TV, leaving them unable to assimilate their teacher's voice. By absorbing entertaining information every time, your child may lose their creativity. They are not getting involved in any creative play or events. If all they do is absorb information from cartoons and movies, they may be reducing their ability to creatively think.

Here is an overview of the negative effects of TV:

It Can Cause Obesity

Sitting down for long without doing any sort of physical activity can lead to obesity since there is no burning of calories. These is one of the negative effects of TV and you have to consciously make your child leave the TV so they won't get obese. The most effective and first step to do is to reduce their time in front of the TV. You can draw a timetable for their activities and give a few hours to TV. Doing this will ensure that they won't watch TV all day long, allowing them to get out and do other things. In their timetable, you can include sports activities or play with friends as alternatives to the reduced TV time. Your child will be able to burn calories while playing sports or playing with other children. You may even sign them up for the gym or martial art classes. If you can prevent them from getting obese, you would be helping your child's physical and mental well-being. They will be in top shape and have the knowledge of how to stay in that shape for the rest of their life. Also, they will have excellent self-esteem from their fit body.

It Can Make Learning Difficult

When kids see entertaining things, they won't leave them since they have not built the mental discipline to put those things aside and focus on productive activities. One of the negative effects of TV is that it can be so addictive to children, preventing them from leaving it to go and learn. When they have work from school, they would rather go to the TV to watch. Without supervision, this can spell doom for their academic performance since there is no one to tell them when to stop watching TV and read. Also, instead of engaging in activities with friends and family, they will prefer to watch TV. When kids play with friends and family, they learn various life skills that TV can not teach. Therefore, your child will be missing out of these skill acquisition interactions. Also, even when they are in the classroom trying to learn, they may find it difficult to concentrate on the teacher. This usually happens because TV shows have exciting methods for portraying information to children. The teacher's style may seem boring and monotonous to your child, preventing them from relating to what the teacher is saying.

It Reduces Creativity and Initiative

Children build their creativity by getting involved in various activities with friends, sharing ideas and solving problems. Watching TV takes a toll on the creative spark of children because they spend more time watching TV than fine-tuning their creativity. With reduced creativity, your child will be less innovative in life. They won't be able to think of ways to enhance things or situations since they didn't spend time doing related things. Similarly, your child's problem-solving skillset will be limited. Due to their inability to play with kids and bring up creative ideas to solve problems together, they will suffer when solving issues since they don't have the creativity to do so. Also, they will fail to see and utilize opportunities because of their creativity. Since they are not used to certain objects or events, their minds won't recognize them as useful opportunities. Instead, they will dismiss them as unimportant.

It Reduces the Time Your Child Can Spend on Developmental Activities

This is one of the negative effects of TV that seeps into other effects. With your child heavily focused on TV, they will have less time to focus on the developmental activities that will help them build stable mental well-being, Instead of learning self-reliance by doing chores in the house, your child would prefer to watch TV, leaving them incapable of being self-reliant. Similarly, they won't learn time management, which may be gotten through house chores. Moreover, they won't be interested in doing extracurricular activities due to their love of TV. They will see extracurricular activities as not being entertaining enough even though they will learn a lot from the activities. Even the family events that you hold dear; your child may not attend. The bottom line is that the addiction of entertaining TV may be insurmountable for your child. It is your duty as the parent to rectify this problem.

It May Influence Your Child Negatively

The TV exposes children to many positive concepts, but doesn't hide vices from children unless you control that. If you leave the child to watch TV unsupervised, they may adopt vices they have noticed in the TV. For instance, your child may see a lot of violence in the movies they watch. The accepted nature of violence in those movies may lead them to see it as a normal part of life. This may further encourage them to partake in violence when they go out. Also, the movies they watch may make substance abuse seem acceptable in society. The more they watch, the more interested they may be in substance abuse, leading them to want to try out the substances. The more time they spend watching vices, the more likely it is that they will be indoctrinated. Besides reducing their screen time, you should also screen what they watch to prevent them from being negatively influenced.

Conclusion

To provide child support in terms of mental health, it is essential that you monitor the things they watch, including TV since those things can cause adverse effects to their well-being. The negative effects of TV include causing obesity, making learning difficult, reducing creativity and initiative, reducing the time for developmental activities, and influencing children negatively.

Resources

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/obesity/causes/

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/tv-affects-child.html

https://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/uncreativity.php

https://www.allprodad.com/7-things-that-lead-kids-down-the-wrong-road/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robynshulman/2020/03/10/this-is-what-happens-when-we-close-doors-on-creativity-in-the-classroom/?sh=266714ff151e