Week 7 Response
(Response to Jhon's post on Role of TV on Child Development)
Technology is affecting children. There is no question about it, there are currently 285 million televisions in US households, based on information from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). There is no doubt that children learn behavior from what they see such as siblings and parents, but their interpretation of these behavior are also based on what they see. Children's behavior is just as likely to come from watching tv and playing games as it is to come from seeing real people in their lives perform actions. This is one of the major concerns of parents as they allow their children to watch tv and surf the net no matter the age. Children are easily influenced and they don't have a firm grasp on what is what, so when they see that men are portrayed as masculine and show little emotion they think that all men are like that. Or when women are shown as weak and fragile they take that image and just run with it. I think that by allowing children to see these images we as adults are encouraging the stereotype that everyone falls into one of the two categories and that what they see on television is true.
In my opinion I think that children are better off not growing up with these prejudices toward how they should act. Children should be allowed to make their own judgement about how they view others. I think this is more of a concern when it comes to tv than it does in video games because even when the television show goes to commercial, the commercial uses even more stereotyping to sell their products. Less exposure would be better for children than more even if the television programs are educational. I would say as parents, adults have the power to choose when their children watch and they should use that ability to benefit their children's development.
