tv and bad choices

Photo: Flickr

Another study on the impacts of TV on children, another adverse report .....

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported on a New Zealand study that found that watching more than 2 hours television per day during the pre-teen years had adverse effects during adolescence, with greater impacts if the child watched more than 3 hours. Some of the impacts:

• a significant increase in attention problems;
• more excessive TV watching;
• reduced interest in school work, perhaps because TV overstimulates and makes more mundane activities such as homework seem boring in comparison.

We know we need to encourage our children's development by spending time with them, and building all manner of good things into their lives and characters. But somehow, our busy lives, often made busier by wanting so many material things and having to work so much more to afford them, leads to us using TV as a substitute.

This is another example where what we commonly choose, or are conditioned by advertising to choose, is not in our best interests - how we so often choose the convenient and superficially attractive over the good. I think I'll make this a theme, which I'll return to a few more times.

Read more from the SMH article.