Both telephone and television have been typical symbols of modern society. These prevalent creatures have considerable effects on people. The question has been raised, “Does television has larger effect?” According to me, I believe the answer is yes, television has a huge amount of negative impact on people which telephone does not have, especially on children.
First and foremost, television does harm to children’s health. The reasons are two-fold. For one thing, if children spend an inordinate amount of time on watching television, they will spend less time on sports. For another thing, children tend to consume a large quantity of junk food while watching television. As a result, their physical health will be undermined. In the long term, they are more likely to develop various diseases, such as myopia, obesity and hypertension. A recent study can back up this point. The survey, conducted by the Chinese Adolescent Health Facility, after polling thousands of Chinese teenagers, found that the average time teenagers spent on watching television has risen from 2 hours to two hours and a half per day in the past five years while the time for sports declined from 2 hours to only half an hour in the same period of time. Another study leads further support. It found that most children aged between 5 to 18 years old considered fried chips and carbonated drinks, such as coca cola, as their favorite food while watching television.
Furthermore, watching television affects children’s academic work adversely. The reason is that television programs distract children from their homework and excessively consume their time on study. As a result, their scores will drop. A longitudinal study found that heavy television viewing among children aged from 2 to 5 adversely affects the development of brain neural networks, significantly undermining their reading and cognitive skills. What happens is that they are less likely to go desired universities or colleges, and they will have less successful careers.
Last but not least, television programs exert a significant negative effect on children’s personality and behaviors. Television programs dramatize and glorify health damaging habits, offensive language and even law breaking activities. Children lack the ability to distinguish this content from the reality. They also have a tendency to emulate what they see on television. These factors can cause serious consequences. Numerous studies reveal a casual relationship between exposure to violence and aggressive behaviors on the part of teenagers.
In sum, all these effects stated above are all exerted by television and telephone contributes none of them. Children are the future of one society. Now children’s life has been adversely affected. Then the society is greatly affected. I strongly recommend that people should control the time of watching television.
TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture on Modern World History