As many television programs become varied, many people allow their children to watch television whenever they want to. These people argue that some programs are very educational, which help their children to broaden their knowledge base. While it is partially true, I believe that watching television has negative impacts on children. The rationale behind this includes many violent programs, addiction, and worsening family relationship.
More than anything else, a number of television programs contain negative scenes. It is not uncommon to watch many programs which deal with adultery, gangster life, and violence. What is worse, these programs are even showed at evening time when many children are still awake. Last winter, there was a serious incident in Korea. A junior high school girl was raped many times by same-aged boys and was left to die with freezing weather. The criminals, boys, confessed that they just did that out of their curiosity, which could be commonly seen from television drama. This tragedy clearly indicates that bad programs on TV encourage children to imitate undesirable behaviors.
Next, children often become addicted to the television. Because childhood is very important period for kids to study, cartoons on television takes children off a great amount of time to improve their academic skills. For instance, when I was ten years old, I was crazy about television cartoons such as superman and spiderman. Even though I had a very important examination the next day, I could not stop watching television, which took me more than two hours. As a result, I got very poor grades on the test and felt very regretful. Judging from my personal experience, television programs, especially interesting cartoons, makes kids glue themselves to the television set, leading them to fail academically.
Finally, television viewing often makes family relationship fragile. Since many children prefer watching interesting contents through television, they lose many chances to share conversation with other family members, often resulting in family conflicts. Last week, I saw an article from a newspaper that a mother had difficulty controling her girl. She did not seem to listen to her mother's word, only concentrating on cartoons on television. Consequently, their relationship had broken, and thus the mother was seeking for helping hands from other social members. From this surprising article, we can say that television surely affects badly on family bonding.
To sum up, I firmly believe that watching television have had bad influences on crimes, academic fulfillment, and family relationship of children. Some people might believe that I am too focusing on the negative aspects of television, excluding educational benefits and entertainment. However, they have to remember the reason many people, even many sociologists, call the television "an idiot box."
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