Who Doesn't Love Watching Television?

Just as the title says: Who doesn't love watching television? I think we all know that our love for watching television may just be the equivalent to America's love for fast food. I think we can also agree that there are a bundle of amazing television shows out there, all of them getting labeled as a must-watch! I remember I grew up watching shows from the Rugrats and Hey Arnold! to Full House and Family Matters. That is probably just four out of the hundreds of shows that I have seen and loved in my lifetime. As a kid, I quickly learned how to check the channel 30 TV guide to find out when my favorite shows would air. I think you can all remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to catch some early showings of cartoons. If you weren't a morning person, you would catch the later shows on Nick at Nite. Then there were those times where you were sick and stayed at home, where you could enjoy some Baby Looney Tunes in the afternoon. That was a quick trip to memory lane, now I will go over the pros and cons of watching television at a young age.

According to studies found in this article on a kid's health organization site, they thoroughly explain the benefits of television, along with the disadvantages of too much television time. The study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation formulated this statistic: "kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend nearly 4 hours a day in front of a TV screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer (outside of school work) and playing video games". If you think that is alarming, I think those hours may be underestimated because I would think that this data was found through surveying kids and parents who may or may not be decreasing the real number. I know that for me, I would not be so readily to answer with numbers higher than 4 hours. Now that you have the general idea of how much television is being watched, I will briefly discuss the pros and cons.

Pros: 

• Educational shows may teach kids the alphabet, basic math, and even about wildlife and animals
• Some shows such as Dora the Explorer include some sort of interactions

Cons:

• Kids who often spend more than 4 hours watching TV each day are more likely to be overweight
• Kids in the U.S. see 40,000 commercials each year which may make junk food and toy ads appealing
• TV can get in the way of playing, exploring, and interacting with parents and others
• TV at early ages may inhibit brain development and growth

Now that you know the general pros and cons, here's a few ways to develop good TV habits for kids:

• Borrow DVDs from the library to limit commercials that may not be kid friendly
• Limit the amount of time spent watching TV by using it as a reward rather than free time activity
• Set a good example by cutting back on your own TV time