Television—Not a Pandora’s Box
Television is always one of the most popular things in people’s daily life especially for the children. Although the result of the small survey conducted by me shows disapproval of television viewing, I strongly believe that the television viewing is beneficial rather than a Pandora’s Box.
There were four questions: How often do you watch TV? How much does it take? What do you usually watch? What do you think of TV viewing? I interviewed a family with two children. June, the mother of two, said that she only allowed her children to watch TV no more than an hour per day and she told me that what her children viewed on TV was the boring cartoon—One Piece. Mike, the elder brother, said although he watched TV everyday in the limited time, he would spend another an hour thinking of the following plots. Nicole, the little sister, said she had little chance to watch TV and she thought that her mother should make the time limit longer. The result shows that children want more time to enjoy the TV viewing while parents assume TV viewing is a waste of time. The reason why parents limit the time mainly focus on the ill effect of television viewing like visual loss, addiction to TV shows and the influence of the violence scenes. The suitable distance from TV screen and the moderate time spending can avoid the visual loss and addiction. As for the violence, aggression, robberies and murder, these crimes are not in all TV shows. Gerard Jones, the author of Killing Monsters, explains why children need fantasy, super heroes, make-believed violence. The pretend violence is actually beneficial for developing healthy attitudes towards real-life violence. It allows children a fantasy space where they can experience the feelings and emotions of violence without actually participating in anything harmful.
TV viewing has a good effect on the development of children’s creativity and imagination. It’s frequently claimed in both popular literature and research journals that television viewing leads to decreased imaginativeness, fantasy play and the ability to be creative. According to Daniel and Patricia, productive imaginative capacities might not be activated during television viewing, the wealth of visual images presented on TV provides children with a storehouse from which they can draw when engaged in imaginative episodes. (Daniel and Patricia, 1988, pg 54) TV shows are commonly adapted by teachers to teaching tools. Supposing that a teacher asks the little kids to watch a VCR and then it’s the children’s task to act it out in the class. During the acting out, the kids need to use their imaginativeness and their creativity to prepare well for plots, the words and the gestures. In this respect, television viewing helps children to develop their creativity.
