Commercialized television was introduced into the world in the early 1940’s. Ever since then America has been spiraling into its own realm of decreasing activity. At the same time, television has had unfavorable lasting effects on the cognitive development of children growing up.  The FCC (Federal Communication Commission) has allowed the amount of violence on television to gain slack through every decade. Television’s negative effects on viewers has brought society on the brink of many mass social, physical, and mental problems. By decreasing the amount time spent watching televisions, countries can develop better behavioral skills in youth, prevent learning disabilities, decrease the amount of violence in both children and adults, boost their overall personal health, prevent early deaths, lower the risk of depression, and increase all around productivity in society.

For ages, there has been the debate on whether television viewing in adolescents has had a negative effect on the way children behave. Television negatively affects brain waves, social skills, physical ability, and speech skills. For instance, by watching television for prolonged periods of time a child’s visual cortex volume grows. This volume growth is the primary cause for the behavioral development stammer. One of the primary side effects for letting children watch television for too long. Studies have shown that “for each additional hour of television watched in childhood, the odds of developing symptoms of depression increase by 8 percent and the odds of being convicted of a crime increase by 27 percent” (Fields). The reason these dramatic increases happen is because for the time a child watching television they could be socializing with kids their age establishing a base for early social skills. Criminologists conducted an experiment seeing if these poor social traits caused by television continued into adult years. These young adults showed poor social behavior, and had a higher likelihood to be imprisoned. The children suffer from increased aggressive behavior after watching repetitive violence on television.

Aggressive behavior is a demeanor that can be linked to juveniles all over the world. Since, television is linked to anti-social behavior in adolescents, and increased chances of incarceration. It is safe to assume that television is an underlying factor for outbursts of anger and victimizing others. By age 18, a U.S. youth will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence.  What comes from this is a desensitization to the gruesome images. Growing up these youths become accustomed to brutality replacing the feeling of empathy. When it comes down to what a child watches on television the two main factors determining violent outbreaks in adolescents are the amount of violence shown on the station they watch, and the parental control over what and how long they watch television. Parental mediation was a key component to this violent behavior because the lack of parental guidance leaves a child to make their own choices on what to watch. When a parent isn’t around to intervene with the content a child watches, the child can watch television for prolonged times, and they can choose what they are watching. The Kaiser Family has found that nearly 2 out of every three shows contain violence in them. They also found that if a child on average watches two hours of television they will see nearly 10,000 occurrences of violence from cartoons alone. A lack in parental supervision can be detrimental to the shows that a child or teen watches on a daily basis.

Acts of violence on television are not only limited television shows. Video games are also a global cause of the growing violence and behavioral issues in youths. The video game market is growing each day with new innovations. This means more realistic simulations of blood and gore being shown to upcoming generations of teens. Adding on to the increase in violence, video games usually have a system of ranking/leveling up by playing game modes. These game modes all revolve around killing the enemy to obtain an objective. In the end, the team that kills the most wins. Granting a faster way to level up in the game. By doing this video games are providing a reward for being more violent than other players. To snowball this demonstration of killing, many times these violent games that go mainstream are based on war. Games like Halo, Battlefield, and Gears of War place the player in a simulation of what it is like to be in a war. The reason this can have such an impression on teens is the lack of consequence for dying. The demonstrations of war in video games is falsely represented, and fails to show the reality of it. Exactly like television presenting death, there is a lack of repercussions or feeling when a person dies. This also decreases a teens sense of environment. In the real world, a person cannot simply respawn like teens are accustomed to. This creates a feeling of unconcern for their own wellbeing, and a false sense of confidence that could very well put them in danger of themselves. This violence could also put others in danger of others. Various studies have been performed testing the effects of violence in video games. These studies have tested the short-term effects, and long-term effects of playing violent games. They found that teens, primarily males, have increased thought and action of aggression from just watching violence.  Long term effects of playing video games over the time showed higher delinquency in teens.

The increase brain size from watching not only affects behavior but extended television time can affect speech skills in children. These disorders include cause stutters, speech impediments, or articulation disorders. “The brain showed thickening in a frontal lobe region, the frontopolar cortex, that is known to lower language-based reasoning ability. Testing confirmed that verbal IQ scores, which measure vocabulary and language skills, fell in proportion to the hours of TV the children watched” (Fields). The ability to learn speech starts at a very young age. In fact, at about twelve months a child attempts repeat sounds that their parents use. The way babies learn speech is not only from auditory sensory, but from physical learning. The key component that televisions can’t provide. For babies to learn speech they need a person to copy because they can’t determine the difference in subtle sounds. For example, the letters “v” and “b” must be taught in person because lip reading is essential to a baby’s speech growth. “Because ‘/Ra/’ and ‘/La/’ occur more frequently in the English language, the American babies recognized these sounds far more frequently in their native language than the Japanese babies” (Kuhl). This study shows how critical it is for babies to learn from real life experience, and from a person directly in front of them. It also proves that at the age of one infants begin to form a groundwork for their future language. The failure to overcome these learning curves has long term effects on a person’s life. Their ability to complete high school greatly declines. After that the possibility of completing a major in college, or for that matter being accepted into a University becomes an even more difficult task. 

The argument that educational television such as Sesame Street, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, and Super Why! can benefit a child’s ability to learn and problem solve is outweighed by the negative effects that these television shows also provide. The age in which these television shows can be beneficial to a child is within a very short time frame. Children below the age of two do not benefit from these shows. This is because they have not developed the necessary skills to understand tropes, and concepts. They also lack the ability to retain information, and develop a memory from it. Another faulty of these shows is that they only benefit children that lack knowledge of basic information because they have not been taught it yet. Essentially, there is another cut off. Once a child learns these basic concepts there is no further advancement that educational television can provide in their learning. The children who are already skillful in the beginner ideas taught on these shows don’t show any increase in academic ability or growth. The time that these children were being taught something that they have already gotten a grasp on is time wasted when they could have been increasing their social abilities along with learning real life experiences that can’t be taught on educational television. The first years after two are the years when a child begins to develop essential skills for being social, and these are the beginning years of developing comprehension skills for problem solving. Hands on experience that a television show cannot provide.

Television continues to affect children as they age into later ages of 5- 18. If the child isn’t already suffering from learning difficulties. Parents still must worry about problems with health and metabolism. Inactivity can decrease a person’s metabolic rate, the ratio of energy expenditure to calorie intake. Studies from the Department of Psychology at Memphis State University showed that there is a difference between how sleeping affects the body versus watching television, “Results indicated that metabolic rate during television viewing was significantly lower (mean decrease of 211 kcal extrapolated to a day) than during rest. Obese children tended to have a larger decrease.” Proving that sleeping is beneficial inactivity. The link between childhood obesity, and hours of television watched can be seen because of the two types of inactivity being tested. Sleep is more beneficial to children because of the benefits to the mental state and rehabilitation of the body. Things that a T.V show cannot provide. One reason that kids are losing sleep for television is rise in the amount televisions being placed in a child’s room. Numerous studies continue to prove that as televisions become more available for children weight gain increases with it. 

 Recently schools have been putting up a fight against this war on childhood obesity and broadcast television. Not just in the lunchroom, but they have been attacking television, too. To combat the problem The Department of Pediatrics and the Stanford School of Medicine took an elementary school then created a class centered around teaching students to reduce the amount of time spent in front of a screen. The group that attended this class over six months were then measured on various parts of the body (waist size, arm circumference, and waist to hip ratio) to see if they had decreased in size. The school found that the students who attended the class had a subtle decrease in BMI rating. The study suggests that body size can be slimmed down just by educating children about the harms of inactivity. 

A growing concern in America is the inflation of commercialization being shown to children. Children that watch two hours of television are exposed to commercials promoting unhealthy habits. Fast food dominates the commercial industry, and to add onto that they specifically target their commercials on television stations like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. “On TV, of the estimated 40,000 ads per year that young people see, half are for food, especially sugared cereals and high-calorie snacks.” Not only is television causing a decrease in physical activity in youths, but it is promoting the very things that are concentrated highly in sugar and trans-fats. Along with this eating habits while watching television become worse because snacks are generally advertised while watching. A study was done surveying mothers of children that watch television. In the study, they were asked generally what their children asked for. The questionnaire found that as a child’s television intake increased the amount of junk food they asked their mothers to buy increased. Creating a positive correlation. Junk food intake in youths increased with the correlation also. Children aren’t the only ones suffering from the effects television has on the body.

Obesity and behavioral issues continue to affect a person well into their adult life. Adults also have correlations between watching television for more than two hours, and increased weight gain. Adults run the risk of developing diabetes, heart problems, and premature death. The chance of these difficulties is even doubled if the adult watches three or more hours of television a day. Inactivity in adults runs more commonly because of the everyday routines. Routines like a 9-5 job combined with driving only add the detrimental effects of television. After working these long days, adults tend to return home to their comfortability of the couch or reclining chair. In a research study, nearly 13,000 graduate student’s lives were followed for 8 years. Of the 13,000, 97 were reported dead. Nineteen from the cause of cardiovascular disease. What is interesting to this study was that those who watched three or more hours of television a day had their chances of death increased by twofold. In addition, underlying factors like amount of time driving, and time spent on the computer were taken into consideration. The two factors had no correlation with premature death unlike their counterpart. Like health issues in adults, behavioral concerns differ from a child’s problems slightly different.

Adolescents experience outbursts of anger, aggression, and anti-social behaviors because of watching television too much. Adults on the other hand can be affected by watching violent television, but they are primary subjects to experience depression. Women who watch more than three hours of television had a 13 percent higher chance of developing depression. Those who watched television irregularly and exercised dropped their chances of depression by twenty percent per the US Nurses’ Health Services. The research shows that inactivity calls for increased depression. While staying active, and exercising decreases a woman’s chance for depression. The problem with depression and television in today’s society is that they complement each other. People will try to avoid reality and the stresses of the real world by consuming themselves in the fake realities of television shows. By not responding to stress in life it only gains room to grow overbearing. This feeling is what causes depression. This is how television being used as a vent for stress complicates life. Engaging in society, and exercising the body can put a person’s stress or burden in life to rest rather than using television and false reality as a cover up.

By lessening the amount television countries watch around the world, behavioral and physical disabilities will start to diminish. The amount of problems that excessive television watching causes is immense. The faults in personality disorders range from increased aggression outbursts in children and adults, a detached feeling towards death, anti-social behavior towards others, depression, troubles in learning language, speech difficulties, and difficulty retaining problem solving concepts. These are just the cognitive troubles that television can have an affect towards. Physically, television causes complications primarily towards health. The combination of being inactive and watching hours of television leads to early death, increased chance of heart failure, risk of developing diabetes, unwholesome diets, and obesity in both youths and adults. The side effects that television can bring to the table outweigh that of the little benefits it can provide.
