Impact of TV on Children: A Detailed Summary
Impact of Television on Children
Thesis Information
Thesis submitted to Osmania University for partial fulfillment of Ph. D. Programme in Communication & Journalism.
By B. Venkanna under the supervision of Prof. K. Narender.
Department of Journalism, Osmania University, Hyderabad-500 007, Telangana State, 2024.
Declaration
The thesis entitled “IMPACT OF TELEVISION ON CHILDREN” is based on original research work.
It does not constitute any part of thesis/dissertation/monograph submitted to any other university for any degree or diploma.
Place: Hyderabad, Date: January, 2024, Signature of the Research Scholar.
Certificate
Certified that the thesis entitled “IMPACT OF TELEVISION ON CHILDREN” is a bonafide record of research work carried out by Mr. B. Venkanna under supervision and guidance.
No part of the thesis has been submitted earlier for any other degree.
Place: Hyderabad, Date: January, 2024, Prof. K. Narender, Research Supervisor.
Acknowledgements
Expresses sincere thanks to research supervisor Prof. K. Narender for valuable guidance, encouragement, and support.
Also thankful to Dr. T. Satish Kumar for guidance and advice.
Thanks to teachers Prof. P.L. Vishweshar Rao, Prof. K. Stevenson, Prof. Nageshwar and Dr. V. Shyam Sunder for encouragement and suggestions.
Gratitude to staff members of the Department of Communication and Journalism, Osmania University.
Expresses gratitude to colleagues and professional friends for their support and new ideas.
Contents Overview
The thesis includes the following chapters:
Introduction (Chapter I): 1-46
Review of Literature (Chapter II): 47-85
Research Design & Methodology (Chapter III): 86-94
Data Analysis and Interpretation (Chapter IV): 95-137
Summary, Findings, and Conclusions (Chapter V): 138-151
Bibliography: 152-164
Appendices: 165-172
Chapter I: Introduction
1.0 Introduction
Visual media is an essential component of classroom instruction.
Instructional resources must demonstrate evidence of effectiveness.
Television is a medium that transports millions to distant places (Syed, 2010).
It is a remarkable medium of communication, entertainment, and education (Bushan, 1992).
Television can have both positive and negative effects on children’s development depending on content.
Children's writing is often similar to television show scripts.
Time spent in educational activities and social interactions are negatively related to time watching educational television (Huston, Wright, Marquis, & Green, 1999).
1.0.1 Television as a Medium of Communication
John Logie Baird invented the 1st mechanical working television system in 1926.
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin demonstrated a system called ‘kinescope’ which is the basis of modern television.
Television is an audio-visual medium that combines sound, picture, motion, color, and drama.
The eye is a powerful sensory organ; visual information lasts long in memory.
Television can transmit visuals and information almost instantly.
It combines visuals with the personal immediacy of radio.
Nicholas Johnson observes: “Television is one of the most powerful forces man has ever unleashed upon himself”.
1.0.2 Children and Media
Children constitute more than 1/3 of the world’s population.
Media institutions are spreading global culture.
Media institutions have not lived up to the expectations of people from the point of view of their contributions for child development.
Growth of consumerism among children is the direct consequence of transnational mass media.
Buckingham (2003) observed that children have been a key target market for media companies.
Children prefer to watch programmes aimed at the general audience, rather than children’s programmes specifically.
Children are actively associated with the media services as consumers but they want the media institutions to provide the goods and services from their everyday life point of view.
Experience reveals that children also employ media stories to reflect their own experiences.
Children are no more silent spectators in this age of competitive media services.
Scholars and advocates of child rights have strongly argued in favor of various measures to monitor violations of children’s rights in the media.
1.0.3 Research on Children and Television
Children spend a sizeable chunk of their time on watching television programmes.
Parents and caregivers have a great responsibility regarding the cultivation of television habits, choice of television programmes and impact of television on children.
Too much television viewing would result in the exclusion of other healthy activities.
Children find it difficult to understand the basic difference between fact and fantasy.
Television can introduce children to stories, traditions and songs.
Television messages affect how they think of others.
Children under six years usually face some difficulty working out the difference between fantasy and reality on television.
Older primary school age children are likely to be disturbed by material that is based on fact.
Television has the potential to generate both positive and negative effects.
Development level is critical in determining the positive or negative effects.
Television viewing frequently limits children’s time for vital activities.
Television influences the way children understand what they watch.
The Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior headed by Jesse Steinfield (1972) reported that viewing violence on TV is conducive to an increase in aggressive behavior.
The largest proportion of effects’ studies focused on aggression specifically.
Norma Pecora (2007) observes that global nature of children’s television must continue to be considered in the future.
Television became an interactive experience with children being able to interact digitally as they watch and continue the experience online.
1.0.4 Role of Television in Child Development
Child development is not a uni-dimensional aspect of human development; it comprises speed and pattern of development, mechanisms of developmental change, population differences etc.
The role of television in child development is widely debated.
McLuhan observed that we need to know more about what elements in the television programmes influence children’s personality.
Van Evra conducted an intensive and extensive review of major studies about television and child development and pointed out that moderate viewing of television programmes would help develop the communication skills of children from disadvantaged background.
Edgar and Edgar observe that television programmes can stimulate a child’s imagination and open up the infinite opportunities that life presents.
Television has also become a prominent educational medium.
Piaget identifies four major stages of child development: sensory motor (0-2 years), pre-operational (2-6years), concrete operation (7-13 years) and formal operations (14 years on).
Heather et al. (2008) comment that studies on infants and toddlers suggest that these young children may better understand and learn from real-life experiences than they do from video.
Aletha Huston and John Wright (1983) proposed a theory of attention to television which stated that the features of television that drive children’s attention may change as a child ages.
Daniel Anderson argued that television viewing was based on active cognition of children.
Crawley et al. (1999) found that television as a medium does not have an indiscriminate negative effect on attentional skills but can teach specific attentional skills and strategies if they are properly designed and presented.
Zimmerman and Christakis (2005) noted that concern over television exposure before age two was echoed in research on cognitive development of children.
Ball and Bogatz (1970) had pointed out that certain television programme, Sesame Street, designed for young children focus on variety of academic and social skills to help prepare children for entering school.
Din and Calao (2001) noted that professionally produced, curriculum based Internet websites for preschoolers enabled the children to learn academic and social skills which had long-lasting effects.
Vandewater et al. (2006) noticed that television viewing did not displace educationally valuable activities of children, except in the case of children and youth with extraordinarily high television exposure.
A meta-analysis of twenty-three studies carried out by Williams et al. (1982) suggested that moderate television viewing (one or two hours a day), was positively associated with academic achievement but higher rates of television viewing were associated with decreasing academic achievement children.
Fisch (2000) has suggested that producers integrate narrative and educational contents as much as possible in order to maximize the cognitive resources available to children.
Friedrich and Stein (1975) have also stated that parent coviewing and mediation would enhance the effectiveness of educational programming.
Studies have emphasized the role of television in cognitive skill development and academic achievement of children who are enabled to enjoy the benefit of early exposure to television.
1.0.5 Positive Effects of Television Viewing
Entertainment: Children learn a plethora of skills ranging from handling emotional trauma, interacting with peers, navigating through tough situations, and stimulating their imaginations through interactive quizzes and thinking patterns.
Education: Educational shows inspire kids to take action and engage in productive behaviours and teach problem-solving skills.
Sports: Watching sports shows generates interest in outdoor activities.
Culture Fever: Learning about other cultures will enhance social learning and development skills.
Creativity: Art channels and shows involving music composing, drawing, and painting stimulate the mind and encourage children to answer their inner calling.
Improved Academic Performance: Children who watch informative and educational shows have been proven to outperform peers on multiple standardized tests.
Healthy Stress Relief: TV shows provide a healthy emotional outlet for kids who go through stress in school or outdoor environments.
Learn about Technology and Latest Trends: Kids stay up-to-date with social trends.
Language and Emotional Skills: Positive TV shows reinforce healthy emotional behaviours and teach kids social skills that are crucial to their success.
Keeps Them Engaged: TV to relieve boredom is a creative solution.
Encourages Social Participation: Kids mimic productive behaviours on TV, helping their development.
Develops Personality and Fosters Independent Thinking: TV shows teach kids to think outside the box.
1.0.6 Negative Effects of Television on Kids
Steals Time: Children may miss out on life’s opportunities.
Lack of Language and Social Skills: Babies’ brains are in the developmental stages before the age of two.
Kills Creativity and Imagination: Children who watch TV excessively cannot stimulate their minds or come up with fresh ideas on their own.
Lack of Focus: Kids may also have a greater likelihood of being diagnosed with ADHD.
Unproductive: TV watching and not achieving milestones is simply time wasted.
Obesity: Kids who watch too much TV are at the risk of developing obesity and other health disorders.
Heart and Eye Health Risks: Kids who watch too much TV are at the risk of developing lazy eye syndrome.
Negative Behaviour: Watching too much TV can alter the brain structure and promote negative behaviour – especially violence and aggression.
Affects Self-Image: TV shows exaggerate reality and provide a distorted view of the world.
Emotional Changes: Kids who are exposed to shows highlighting sex, drugs, and alcohol abuse are vulnerable to emotional changes.
Poor Academic Performance: Spending a lot of time watching TV may result in a lack of participation in other activities.
Causes Learning Problems: Learning problems due to excess TV time range from passive listening and underdeveloped listening skills to a lack of fine motor and creative skills.
1.0.7 Beginning of Television
Television has the unique feature of combining audio and visual technology.
“the Federal Communication commission in USA reserved 242 frequencies for educational broadcast on no profit and non-commercial basis in 1952."(Magnuson, 1965)
Walker (1995) favored television for its audio and visual effects and reported that it can be used to demonstrate processes or physical skills; to show movement.
1.0.7.1 In India
Television first came to India [named as ‘Doordarshan’ (DD)] on Sept 15, 1959.
The first telecast started on Sept 15, 1959 in New Delhi.
Television industry got the necessary boost in the eighties when Doordarshan introduced colour TV during the 1982 Asian Games.
1.0.8 Impact of Television on Various Areas
Learning: children learn valuable lessons about life, communal accord, team spirit, cooperation, unity in diversity and kindness.
Culture: Television has changed the life style of Indian people and culture; there is a loss in the cultural values among youth as many programmes are full of obscenity and vulgarity.
Violence: Extensive viewing of television violence can have ill effects on young impressionable minds.
Nutrition: Children who watch too much television are less physically fit and consume a lot of junk food.
Sexuality: Exposure to sexual content in media affects children by portraying explicit and unrealistic sexual behavior among teenage boys and girls.
Advertising: Ads target children to sell children’s products like toys, chocolates, wafers, stationery, clothes to eatables and health drinks.
1.0.9 Parental Supervision and Discipline among Children
Parents are children’ first line of defense, so good parenting becomes very important.
Research has proved that good parenting plays a crucial role in preventing the aggression among children.
Parents should control the television viewing hours among children.
Statement of the Problem
Television programs/contents are inappropriate especially for young minds.
Television is a convenient pastime and viewers of all ages have access to all its programs/contents without restriction or inhibition.
Studies concluded that television viewing is harmful to the cognitive development of young minds.
The study is aimed at assessing the effects of television programs and the impact of television on the behavior of school going children in Hyderabad and Secunderabad twin cities, Telangana state, India.
Significance of the Study
Television subtly changed the contours of social relationship.
Television is the window of the world.
The glamour and glory of television has attracted all sectors of society and has literally hypnotized the children.
The harmful effects have been often postulated and reported.
From the past few decades television has crawled to Indian homes.
Baseline data regarding television viewing habits like time spent in viewing, distance from the television, programme selection etc., are crucial which need to be understood to formulate effective awareness strategies.
No such studies have been done on the children of 13-16 years age group till now in Hyderabad and Secunderabad regarding the impact of television on the behaviour of School Going Children.
Need for the Study
India in the past years has seen development in television technology that is quite dynamic in many aspects.
Television has great impact on various aspects of a child’s life and a matter of immense worry for educationists, doctors, psychiatrist, planners, psychologists and pediatricians’ world over.
Television viewing has negative effects too. It may place children in inactive roles and decreases actual social interaction etc.
Over the years many school teachers and parents globally have shown concern over the exposure of TV programmes and cartoons to children.
The present research examines the impact of television programmes on school going children psyche, school performance, language and behavior.
Objectives of the Study
To examine the level of exposure to television watching by the school going children in twin cities of Hyderabad & Secunderabad.
To find out the interest of the children in their favourite programmes that are broadcast by the TV channels.
To investigate the perceptions of school going children regarding watching TV programmes.
To explore the possibilities among children on television watching behaviour pattern.
To identify the priority of the children on different television programmes such as development programmes, entertainment programmes and news and discussions.
To ascertain the effects of children daily activities due to television watching.
To reveal the perceived barriers encountered through online classes during COVID pandemic.
Hypotheses of the Study
The school going children in twin cities of Hyderabad & Secunderabad not exposed to television watching.
The children does not give any preference to TV shows/programmes that cast by various channels.
There is no significant difference in the perceptions of school going children on watching TV programmes.
The children does not engage themselves in any other activity while watching the television.
The children does not prioritize the television programmes (development programmes, entertainment programmes and news and discussions).
There is no effect on school going children with regard to their daily activities due to television watching.
There is no difference in the perceptions of the school going children regarding the barriers encountered through online classes during COVID pandemic.
Scope of the Study
It was virtually impossible for researchers to take advantage of the fact that all educational institutions in the study area of Hyderabad, Telangana India to collect the data because of lack of time and limited resources.
Hence, the data is collected from the school going children of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.
The sample delimited to 8th and 9th classes of government and private schools who are in the age group of 13-16 years.
The study pertains only to ICSE and CBSE syllabi.
The study also controlled as those who are staying in their residences and hostel who come from rural areas.
Operation Definitions of the Study
Television Impact: The impact of television lead to behavioral difficulties, reduced achievement at school, attention problems, sedentary behaviours and an increased risk of obesity.
Children: The meaning ‘children’ is attributed to those school going children and their age ranges from 13-16 years under normal circumstances.
Television Viewing Behavior: Television viewing behavior is assessed in terms of place of television viewing, availability of different television channels, types of television programmes, physical position while watching television etc.
Children Attitude toward Television Viewing: The perception of children toward television and their bondage with the medium essentially constitute the attitude of children under the study.
Chapterization
Chapter I – Introduction: Research study on impact of television on behaviour of school going children in Hyderabad.
Chapter II - Review of Literature: Discusses different works related to the various issues on the impact of watching television by school children.
Chapter III - Research Methodology: Incorporates the theoretical framework relevant to the research.
Chapter IV – Data Presentation and Analysis: Focusses in analyzing the impact of television on different aspect of school going children of twin cities of Hyderabad.
Chapter V – Findings & Conclusions: This chapter provides conclusion to the research study and followed by the important recommendations constructed on the findings of the research work.
References
See original document for full list of references used in the study.
Chapter II: Review of Literature
Review of literature to know work has been done and conceptual and theoretical framework.
National Studies
Runali and Patricia (2022) found Binge-watching had no impact on academic performance but caused sleep deprivation.
Rajesh, Mayank and Shruti (2021) the children's behavior was significantly influenced by watching cartoons.
Sonichan (2019) found Children expressed that cartoons channels provides them entertainment than the physical games than outdoor activities.
Saba Aziz et al. (2019) found television cartoon viewing affecting school going children’s psychological behaviour.
Shanthipriya and Prabha (2017) parents should be very careful while selecting cartoon programs for their kids.
Rai et al. (2016) strong impact on cartoon programs on children which can be seen on their life style,dressing and violent behavior.
Venkata Chalam and Vishwanatha (2015) the mental health among girls in urban areas was good.
Dharamkumar (2015) found knowledge regarding television habits and its impact on high school children.
Beenish et al. (2014) suggested that Blindness control programs can be taught to children to spread the awareness to them.
International Studies
Dy et al. (2023) spending not more than 2 hours screen time had minimal negative effects on the development of children.
Ouyang et al. (2023) found frequent use of interactive screens was harmful to the well being during the pandemic.
Hadiza and Shamsudeen (2021) found television effected the actions of students academic performance and their behavior.
Khan et al. (2020) prolonged screen use was associated with school stress and school satisfaction across 38 countries.
Conclusion for Literature
Television powerful media for communication for all ages. Focus on the students and parents in Telanaga state.
Chapter III: Research methodology
This chapter describe the research design, data source, population sample and the methods to examine the impact of television on the children.
Research Design
Deductive or inductive, qualitative or quantitative analysis used.
Data SourceBoth primary and secondary data collection methods followed
PopulationHigh school of Hyderabad schools studied for sampling
Sample & Sampling TechniqueA representative sample of 303 school children are the units of research
Data Collection ToolsMultiple Section questionnaire used for data collection purposes.
Data Analysis usedDescriptive Statistics
Validity of the data usedConstruct and external validity maintained in the analytical procedures.
Statistical ProceduresFrequency Analysis
Cross-Tabulations & Chi-Square Test
Chapter IV: Data Presentation and Analysis
Students' Demography
Gender: Nearly equal distribution of boys (48.5%) and girls (51.5%).
Age: Predominantly 14-year-olds (38.6%).
Birth Place: Majority from urban areas (71.3%).
Social Background: Over half from Backward Class (BC) (54.5%).
Class: Most in 9th class (71.3%).
School Type: Slightly more from private schools (52.5%).
Medium of Instruction: Overwhelmingly English (97.0%).
Syllabus: Primarily State syllabus (79.2%).
Stay: Mostly at home (95.0%).
Family Type: Predominantly nuclear (81.2%).
Parental Occupation: Primarily fathers with private jobs (36.6%) and mothers as housewives (73.3%).
Parental Education: Predominantly fathers with only school-level education (60.1%) and mothers up to the primary level (29.7%).
Level of Exposure to TV Watching
Television at Home: The vast majority have TV at home (97.0%).
Frequency of TV Watching: Most watch daily (64.4%).
Reasons for Watching TV: Primarily for entertainment (58.4%).
Reasons for Not Watching TV: Mostly time factor (43.6%).
Television Watching Hours: Most watch 1-2 hours per day (62.4%).
Preferences for TV Programmes
Overall, most students have favorite TV programs (85.8%). The top two mentioned were Film/movie shows and Educational programming.
Perceptions on TV Programmes
Students generally agree that TV lightens their mood and keeps them entertained. They do not seem to agree with the idea that television helps improve their social life.
Analysis of Television Viewing Behavior
Watching location: Mostly At home.
Company while watching: The students report watching more with parents and friends.
Time Most report Specific timings, or flexibility.
Chapter V: SUMMARY, FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
Summary of Objectives & Research design
The thesis outlines the Objectives of Research on the influence of TV and its impact. This chapter uses data and analysis of prior chapters and presents key findings, and makes several suggestions.