All Behave!!

The earliest television has been invented by a German inventor called Paul Nipkow in 1884 which is formed a huge part of today’s media. Since then television has become an effective tools that has an influence on people no matter their age or level of education. It has been used politically by governments and parties to support their ideologies. However, television has negative implications on not only on adults in terms of health and social aspects; but also affects children's social, physical development and academic achievement. According to the American Time Use Survey (2003), the average American watches more than 2 hours of television each day. In a sixty-five year lifespan, that person will have spent nine years glued to the tube. This constant attention to programming can directly cause positive and negative effects. The negative effects can be explained in term of psychologically, emotionally, and physically. From the statistic, I strongly believe that television viewing can lead to various negative effects.

As preliminary, the children development of the thinking process can be badly affected when they watch unsuitable program (Sharif 1999). The program likes ‘Friends’ can manipulate their thinking about the real world. In the show, the occurrence of problems can be easily solved within the thirty minutes slot. Hence, they will become effortless when they face the complex and complicated situations in the mean time and the future. According to Leigh (2009), these passive children have low ability to generate their brains to develop the imaginative skills. This thing is important to make-believe worlds and improves their problem-solving ability. In brief, the potential of the children in the future will be affected without skills and creative thinking.

Other than that, television viewing also can create behaviour problem of the children when they imitates characters like Bart in ‘The Simpsons’ (Sharif 1999). The character is very rude and bad. His behavior should not be copy to the real life and can lead the children to vandalism and bullies. Moreover, when they watch programs that containing violence continuously, it will causes the children to become less sensitive to the act of violence itself. They will think that violence is the easiest way and alright for them to solve their problems. In addition, some children attempt to imitate the superhero in the movie they have watched in television. For instance, there were children jumped out of trees in Superman costumes and got themselves injured (Sharif 1999). These harmful and dangerous behaviours are undesirable in our society and everyday life.

Beside that, over viewing television can be the trigger to several types of health problems. It is consistent to Sharif (1999) that prolonged periods in front of the television mean that children are physically not active. When watching television, people are usually tended to consume snack simultaneously. It’s already become the habit especially the youngster to do it as a sedentary activity which can cause them obesity and related diseases (Rutherford 2002). They are also lack of doing sports and exercise which can be more likely to obese. In UK Time Use Survey (2000) statistic, hours spent to watch television is more than doing any other things in normal daily life for a person. Therefore, it shows that people are preferred to watch television in the first choice. Socializing, sports and exercise, reading and many other healthy activities are left behind for the sake of the electronic box.

To conclude, television viewing bring harmful effects that lead to insufficient development of thinking skills, create negative behaviours and culprit to unhealthy and passive lifestyles that affects the psyche of humans mankind. The purpose of television programs designed which is to demand undivided attention (Leigh 2001) must be overcome strongly to create a better life for the future generation. It is true that television viewing give us benefit like information; but it give more harm to our life directly and indirectly when we watch it continuously.