Influence of Television Towards Children

ABSTRACT

This research will study the influence of television towards children. This research purpose is to identify any related changes, consequences, and factors that will occur to children’s lifestyle as a result from the influence of the television towards them. This research will use open-ended and close-ended survey paper that will have to distribute to estimate amount of 2000 adult especially parents; this is to determine parents’ observation towards children development with television in rural and urban areas. It will also use interview method to interview the children directly, which is primary school and kindergarten with the estimate number of 200 children in urban areas and 200 children in rural areas. Then, this research also will use observation to observe any development or changes that the children will show as a result from television’s influence in terms of communication skills and self esteem or otherwise. The young children from age 5 to 8 years are expected to have more influence from the television whether from advertisements or programs content as they are unable to perceive the content according to its real message. This research is hopefully will provide better understanding on how television teach and affect children’s mentality as well as behavior, and give benefit to the parents also.

RESEARCH STUDY: INFLUENCE OF TELEVISION TOWARDS CHILDREN
INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Television seems to be a very powerful media nowadays to spread many types of information. The information can be either negative or positive. Hence, this research paper is aiming to highlight the influenced of television towards the children. Television was categorized under electronic media, along with internet and radio.The electronic media give a strong influence towards the viewer if we compared with non-electronic media such as magazine and newspaper, maybe because people are more attached with electronic media. In case of television, we can say that most of people nowadays have more than one television at home and some of them even put television in their own room. With the development of technology nowadays, people can even watch television with their mobile phone and computer. This show that people very attached with television, because of this they can be influence by the positive and negative aspect of television. Children moreover will be easily affected by the media if there is no guardian that observed their action. Children today was very advanced with technology and like to watch television and enjoy playing video games, rather than playing with their friends. Another important of this research paper is to show how great the influence of television toward children in urban and rural area. Many study have been conducted regarding this matter, however, the result is still being debating. The question than been raised was, why? How? and why? television can be influenced to the children. Is it television affect children more in negative or positive side is still being debated. Hence, this research paper is aiming in providing more information to the society about the influence of television toward children.

RESEARCH PROBLEM The aim of this research paper is to study the influence of television towards the children. It is to examine the positive and negative aspect of television and whether it can influence children behavior, thought, the way of communication and socialization. We can see that many problems that faces by our society nowadays, one of the factors that always be pointed out was television, that is one of the media sources. Children moreover, are easily being influence by television as they spend most of their leisure time to watch television. They enjoy their time in watching cartoon, film and series that have variety of moral values. As for example, many cartoons and animated series that popular among children today show many negative values, how they interact with the elders, their behavior towards friend and many violence scenes that can influence children behavior. If they watch television without the observation by the elders, they can be easily influence. However, there are positive values that they can learn and add their knowledge about something. This positive and negative influence of television always been debated by the scholar because there is no significant data that can show the influence of television to people. Hence, this research paper is aiming in finding the influence of television toward children and the cause of the influence. In this study, we also try to find whether there is difference between children in urban area and rural area in the influences of television and whether the same influence also being face by the children in rural area as they are not really advanced in modern technology as the children in urban area.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
1. To study how the television can influence children’s behavior.
2. To know how the impact of the television towards children.
3. To know the cause of the television influence on children.

RESEARCH QUESTION
1. How much children spend their time on television?
2. What type of programs children prefer to watch?
3. How the television can influence children behaviour?
4. How the lifestyles of children in urban and rural areas affect their behaviour?
HYPOTHESIS
1. The more children spent their time watching on television, the lesser social interaction they will experience.
2. More time spend on watching television may influence children behaviour.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
1. We can identify why communication skills among children is getting decrease.
Nowadays, there are various types of programs. As the children were born in this world, they are already exposed with television and other kinds of media. Disney channels, Cartoon network, Nickelodeon are the examples of television programs that make children attached to the television and spend most of their time with it.
2. We able to discover that actually television give more impact in terms of children’s growth which may affect their behavior later.
As we know, the children’s behaviour is to mimic what they see, what they perceive and what is ought to be. Children’s will try to imitate the character in the movie or drama. Some of the television programs show violence. Without supervision of the parents, the violence shows in the television programs will influence the children behaviour which may lead to aggression.
3. We able to distinguish between children in urban areas and children in rural areas by focusing on their lifestyle.
Different way of lifestyle also contributed to the children’s behavior. Children in urban areas spend more time on television than the rural areas. Children’s in urban areas are less socialize because they rather staying at home watching cartoons than playing outdoor activities.