The Effect of Television Viewing on Children Chan, Lik Hang Nick Course title: Foundation year Date: October 2004 Television is one of the most popular media because it provides both visual and audio stimulation. It has become so much part of daily life that it is difficult for a majority proportion of children to imagine life without television. Although television is a major source of information and entertainment, it may have a number of negative influences and therefore the effects of television viewing on children are a concern and cause controversy. For the purpose of this essay, children are considered as aged between five and fifteen. Different countries' television criteria, including Australia and Britain, will be mentioned as reference. In order to discuss whether television viewing has a negative influence on children, several aspects will be examined. First, there exist informative, educative and entertaining television programs, which extend children's knowledge and made education interesting. In addition, learning by television may be effective. Conversely, the insufficient of level of parental control may reduce participation in other activities. Moreover, children who are exposed to television violence may be aggressive, which is undesirable in common society. Due to the limitation of this short essay, other factors, such as advertisements and political television, are not included. First, knowledge may be widened and education may be interesting through television viewing. It is widely believed that certain numbers of television programs provide information, education and entertainment, for instance, BBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, Fox Sports World are the representative networks among this area. "Channel Nine News," "A Current Affair," "Today Tonight," and "60 Minutes" are the most popular informative programs in Australia. These programs show the news and current issues in the world. Sporting and music shows are also popular among the Australian society. The family can be drawn together by watching television (Arnold, 1997, p.82-4). Furthermore, Arnold points out that the visual images and the audio from television is different from traditional classroom learning. Education should not be boring and television is the breakthrough. He also states that skills of analysis, criticism and creativity can be learned from television (1997, p.134). Thus, informational and educational programs may help the children's growth. Another positive effect of television viewing is that it helps children to learn effectively. Van der Molden and van der Voort challenge the assumption that television news is remembered worse than printed news does not apply to children. Their research shows that children who had watched television news recalled more than those who had read the same news in printed form. This can be explained by the audiovisual information on television. News is received by both verbal and visual codes on television. On the other hand, news is received by verbal code only. As a result, Van der Molden and van der Voort believe that the extra memory code offered by television may increase the efficiency of learning (1998, p.40). Furthermore, Mares writes that there are "prosocial" television programs. Prosocial, as defined by Mares, is equivalent to positive. He claims that children who watched these positive television programs act more positively while compared with those did not watch. Johnston and Ettema's research, as cited in Mares, shows that prosocial programs successfully changes viewers' attitudes. Mares comments that prosocial programs are effective and helps to reduce stereotype and prejudice (1996, Internet). Hence prosocial programs increase the children's learning efficiency. Although learning by television may be effective, varies researches present a scenario where television viewing of children is beyond adult's control. Petrie's research indicates that fifty-seven percent of respondent have an opportunity to make decision on the choice of television programs watched (1995, p.16). Also, research in Britain, as cited in Petrie, reports that forty percent of respondent watched television alone (1995, p.13). Indeed, Hodge and Tripp find that television is not considered as a part of teaching after interviewing some teachers (cited in Seiter, 1999, p.240). These facts seem to suggest that the type of television program viewed may not be under sufficient controls. The lack of control may reduce the involvement in other activities (Rosengren, Johnsson-Smaragdi and Sonesson, 1994, p.138). According to Dalquist, sports and competition programs and fiction are generally preferred among the age group from twelve to sixteen, informational programs are not preferred until the age of nineteen (cited in Rosengren, et al., 1994, p.139). Rosengren concludes that program preferences are laid at childhood. He further notes that viewing violence and horror content at early age causes restlessness, aggressiveness and lack of concentration at older age (1994, p.140-143). It can be seen from Mohr's survey that parental control is insufficient. He suggests that, in order to protect children from the harmful effects of television, parents and the television industry are both responsible (cited in Luke, 1990, p.262-7). These seem to suggest that parental control is essential, but it is insufficient in current society. Moreover, television violence is one of the main factors of aggressive behaviour. It is generally believed that children may not be able to differ an exciting and unusual experience from reality. Without sufficient parents' guide and censorship of media, television violence is harmful to children (Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, 1990, p.xviii-xix). Neither an absolutely "good" society nor an isolated world is suitable for the development of children. A balance is therefore needed (1990, p.98). However, it can be seen from the Tribunal's report that there is a great amount of violence on Australian television (1990, p.31). As a consequence, there may be an increase in crime and a lowering of community values. The sense of mistrust and insecurity may also be developed. Another effect is that the excess of violence viewing possibly lead to accept this behaviour (1990, p.19-21). Lovibond also agree that, although not necessary, the tendency of doing illegal acts may be increased due to the large amount of violence viewing (cited in Luke, 1990, p.147). Television violence is a major negative effect on children because of insufficient parental control. Summing up, there are two major positive influences of television viewing. Viewing informational and educational programs may widen children's knowledge. Prosocial programs may improve the efficiency of education. However, misuse of television leads to opposite results. It can be seen from several researches that parental control is insufficient and prosocial programs are not preferred among children. Television violence is also concerned, because it is one of the factors of aggressive behaviour. Therefore, insufficient parental controls in conjunction with television violence seem to outweigh positive effects. Informational, educational and prosocial may be beneficial to children only if they are under sufficient parental control.   Bibliography Arnold, J.S. (1997) Reading Television: Critical Viewing and Creative response. Book 2. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 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