As I sit in front of the television trying to pin down an article it takes me 1 and a half hour instead of 30 minutes to do a simple activity. You might find more than one instance in your daily life when you realize that your favourite program just might be making you immensely dull. There have been days where many of us just lounge in front of the tv with the parent begging you to do one simple chore and you simply forget to get up and do it. It’s not just because you’re lazy but also because my friends that idiot box right there is making you slow.
A Cambridge study showed after a research spread over 845 schools, that student who watched tv got less marks as compared to those who didn’t and the marks simply reduced as the hours in front of the electronic box grew. As a matter of fact, even those who studied a lot and watched just a bit of tv got lesser marks than those who watched none of it. I am sure this research is saying quite a lot about what the hours we spend glued in front of the television are doing to us.
It’s surprising how much addicted the children of today’s day an age is to the television. In a survey conducted amongst some of the children at a day care centre, ranging from children between the age of 4-6, showed that when given a choice between spending time with their fathers or watching television, above 50% of the kids chose watching television. Doesn’t that scare you somehow?
Another study conducted by the university of California on people between the ages of 18-32 showed that more the exposure to the television lesser is their verbal and mental processing levels. In fact, those who don’t watch TV have twice the processing than those who do. Isn’t this enough evidence to show that the television is bringing more harm to our body than knowledge to our brains? Children mostly don’t even sit to seek knowledge, the TV is mostly for entertainment purposes but at the same time it is distancing them from reality into a world filled with fake backgrounds and HD colours.
The study has also show that those who watch more of Television in their early adult life are more prone to having slower functions during middle age. Such people are also prone to faster cognitive aging. So basically the more hours you spend staring at a multi pixelated screen the faster you are going to age mentally. People with sedentary lifestyles are even more prone to this. Has television actually taken over so much of our lives that we would rather watch a soap opera daily without fail than once in a while go to the theatre and watch plays? The Television has proven to make people slower and more sluggish as well as spoiling our eyesight, most of the children sitting in grade 4rth with glasses probably have them either because its hereditary or because they spend too many ours in front of the TV, very few of them probably got it because they study a lot.
There have been way too many studies to show how the idiot box is actually making us idiots, for instance having a tv in the room is the worst thing you can do for your toddler according to another study, a child between the age of 3-6 is exposed to TV present in the bedroom will fail to have a deeper understanding of relationships and objects, as the characters portrayed in the tv often lack depth, and moreover the bedroom is place where families usually get time to bond so having a TV in the bedroom lacks in less of family bonding automatically making relationships looser and the idea of relationships more flaccid in terms of the child’s thinking.
So think again before you grab your bag and chips and decide to lounge in front of the TV, are you ready to let that plastic box convert you into an idiot? Or are you going to decide your own mental strength without letting ti govern yours?