You may have come to this article looking for survey results or case studies to reference. If so, I apologize. I don’t have any of that to offer. Mainly because I don’t need reports and figures to answer the above question for me. I want to share with you a brief story about my son to help answer this pressing question.
When my son was just a small boy, I think between two and three years of age, we purchased the Disney film, A Bug’s Life. It quickly became a family favorite. In fact, it is still one of my favorite movies. We watched the movie several times within the first few weeks that we purchased the film.
One day in our kitchen as I was pouring myself a cold glass of milk, I looked over to see my son standing in front of the refrigerator with a plum in his hand. He stared at the plum for a few seconds then proceeded to smash it on his face. He bellowed, “Oh my eye, my eye.” I stepped over to see how bad he had hurt himself only to find that he was laughing. Come to find out, he had not hurt himself. He was laughing because he was acting out one of the scenes from the movie, A Bug’s Life and he was amused with himself.
There is a scene in the movie where the ants build a fake bird and stage a phony bird attack to scare off the grasshoppers. During the attack the large caterpillar grabs a berry and squashes it on his face to give the appearance of being wounded by the bird. As he does so, he screams, “Oh, my eye.”
After realizing that my son was okay, I found just as much humor in his actions as he did. So to answer the question, yes, I do believe television impacts the behavior of our children. I don’t need a survey or a page full of stats to convince me. I have witnessed my son modeling behavior that he witnessed on the television several times over the years.
You can choose to believe what you want, but the television is shaping how your children think and act. Children will model the behaviors played out in front of them. It is wise to be proactive in selecting what your children are exposed to.
What do you think? Agree or disagree?
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I agree and disagree. I think it depends on what your children are watching. Some shows are actually good and educational while others aren’t. That’s my opinion.
My opinion? You are right that TV has a great influence. But not just with kids. It influences us adults in significant ways also, otherwise why would advertisers spend so much money for 30 second spots? It influences our decisions, our values, our ethics, and more. Most of us Christians need to be more discerning about what we watch and what we let our children watch.
We spent years without a TV and now, that’s all my kids want to do is watch the dumb thing. We try to limit and monitor what they watch, but even the stuff that looks harmless is sometimes not in line with the morals I want them to have.