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Shaila SabusaProfessor OdakEnglish 110211 March 2014Introduction-Personal Perspective:When I look around the only things I see is kids from their toddler days to their early 20's dressed and act like they are someone from a TV show. I wonder what if these TV shows had a different impact on us if they had different content, what if they didn't have much violence or cursing, and what if they kept all TV shows PG. "What if" is the main question that rises in a person's mind when thinking about a topic like this. TV has changed since I was a kid to now, I remember when I was young we used to watch Elmo and friends and just be happy with that. Nowadays you see kids act like some characters from their favorite show Family Guy or see teens dress as they were part of the show American Dad all this has made an impact of the way the upcoming generation is brought up. Some want everything because they see it on TV and others ignore the good stuff on TV and only want to watch action and violence. When young kids watch something that's what they learn from. If they see something inappropriate for their age they start to mimic it in real life.The first two years of life are considered a critical time for brain development. TV and other electronic media can get in the way of exploring, playing, and interacting with parents and others, which encourages learning and healthy physical and social development. Sixty-two percent say that sex on TV shows and movies influences kids to have sex when they are too young. Shows such as "Teen Mom" or "16 and pregnant" influence kids to have sex and not to focus in school. Because of these show, the rate of teen pregnancy has gone high when the purpose of this show was to tell the viewers on how difficult it is to be a teen parent. I have seen girls that are twelve or thirteen and are pregnant because they thought it was "cool" for them to have sex with their boyfriends. I admit I have done things that I have seen on TV to show to my friends that I am "cool" enough to be with them. TV shows have influenced kids to do the things that our parents have kept us away from but we get more attracted to that stuff because our friends are doing it and think that if nothing has happened to them, then why will something happen to me.But parenting plays a part in this too. The problem is made even worse by the relatively lax supervision parents provide over what their children watch on television. My parents were the few parents who actually gave my brother and myself a specific time to watch TV [beside that I had to do other things like dancing, cooking or learning traditions and customs of my households] only because when we were little we only had one TV in our living room. A 2010 national survey of television-watching behavior in children showed that seventy-two percent of children reported no time restrictions over television viewing while fifty-two percent reported that they were free to watch any type of content they wished. While thirty-nine percent reported having to follow rules, those rules were enforced "some of the time or less." I know now that if my parents let me watch that much TV I would have not made good grades, and definitely not made it college.Over the time frame, TV has revolutionized in the way they broadcast these shows with the programming they have and how everything is set out to be. Over the time TV programming has advanced to violence, sexual content and cursing and brought joy to a young child's mind about how if they do such things, it will make them cool. The history of television is very broad so now lets take a closer look on how it came about in the world and how well it changed over generations with children.The History of Television on ChildrenTelevision was invented for the entire family to come together sit down and have family time. This new form of entertainment brought everything in the comfort of our own homes. The first television appeared during the World Fair in 1939 (Newcomb 9). Families watched television together because of the set of television was too big to set into each room. At the time families had to make negotiations on what to watch, which made this experience a shared experience. Only in modern days does each room have a TV. Because of this each room having TV the bonding, negotiation and sharing experience has vanished in families giving children the freedom to watch anything at anytime no matter how bad the show may be (Lotz 51). The American Broadcasting Company first aired Saturday morning children television shows on August 19, 1950. Since this time television shows for children have developed slowly and gradually. "Since 1936, there have been many changes-increases in line structure and increases in definition. From 343 lines we jumped to 441 lines. There was much dabbling with 500 lines, but ultimately 525 lines was adopted as standard" (Monfort 200). Just by these numbers we can see that we have had many lines added with different programming on each line.Programs are classified into several different categories. The categories were situation comedy, animated cartoons, children's variety programs and action adventure drama (Comstock 294). The programming was targeted towards families because the television programmers envisioned American families sitting and viewing their television shows together. By 1951 network schedules included up to 27 hours worth of children programming. In 1970s shows were now offering to extend shows for children such as Scooby Laff-a Lympics (Basta 127). Such shows had a purpose to increase audience flow across the entire morning. Children's programming in the 1980s was influenced by the rapid growth of the cable industry. Cartoons still remained to be the standard children's attention. The new and hot and happening cable networks such as Disney and Nickelodeon primarily aimed their programming to children. As well as the other cable networks that offered children's programming like Discovery, Learning Channel, USA, TBS, the Family Channel and Lifetime have all experimented in programming for children. By the 1990s the Children's Television Act introduced many educational shows for children's viewing (Berry& Asamen 63-66). This was all to get the focus of children to watch more and more TV. These cable networks work day and night to make sure that the shows they have on are proper for the age. But all of this is only done for one reason and one reason only; and that is the business and profit growth of the company. Unlike adults, children don't mind watching the reruns of a television show because it will still give them their creative ability to make up their own show in their mind (Comstock 299).In 1950s, parents, teachers and social scientists asked their legislators to do something about the harmful effects of television viewing (Bryant 164). The first ever-congressional hearing took place in 1952 over the fact that violence was going to corrupt the minds of young children due to the violence shown on the television shows (Basta 200). Since then policies have been made to continue research and monitor and analyze and explain the relationships between television and children and how their behavior has an effect from watching too much television.ConclusionThe changes in television programming did not occur over a few years but it changed over several generations. Now everything is about the business and what children want to see. Through my research I found out that most kids nowadays want to see content that they see on the big screens in movie theaters. The action, violence and abuse on are the main things that any kid sees anywhere. They assume that anything they see on television or in movies are what they are supposed to do out in the real world. When a character from a show says something provocative and repeats it in the show many times then the child will catch on to that and will say it themselves. Through my research I have also found out that many families do not have that family bond anymore because they do not sit together and watch TV. This all has to do with the age of the child. The older the child gets the more freedom his/her parents give them and they take advantage of that. The argument I want to draw into this essay is to ask ourselves, have we really lost the family connection that we once used to have when we were kids. The other argument I want to draw is what are some ways we can prevent this corruption from over taking a young child's mind. Personally, I see no wrong to have some quality family time by watching a movie or a show after dinner and talking about things that may be bothering someone and as a family come together and find a solution to the problem.Works CitedBasta, Samir Sanad. Culture, Conflict and Children. University Press of America, Inc. New York: 2000. Print.Berry, Gordon L. and Joy Keiko Asamen. Children and Television. Sage Publications, Inc. Newbury Park, California: 1993. Print.Bryant, Jennings. Television and the American Family. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Hillsdale, New Jersey: 1990. Print.Comstock, George and Haejung Paik. Television and the American Child. Academic Press, Inc. San Diego, California: 1991. Print.Lotz, Amanda D. "What Is U.S. Television Now?" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 625. Sage Publications, 2009. 49-59. The End of Television? Its Impact on the World (So Far). JSTOR. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.Monfort, Ray A. "A Brief History of Television for the Layman." Hollywood Quarterly. 2.4. University of California, 1949. 197-200. JSTOR. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.Newcomb, Horace. "Toward Television History: The Growth of Styles." Journal of the University Film Association. 2.30. University of Illinois, 1978. 9-14. PERSPECTIVES ON TELEVISION STUDIES. JSTOR. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
