Question

How does it impact of television/movies have cognitive, physical, and psychosocial development during middle childhood. Include how tv/movies change 1. brain function 2.disrupt physical development 3. Influences social development 4. Can positively influence a child? How Bronfenbrenner’s Biological systems theory would describe the impact of TV/movies?

Answer 1

The impact of television/movies on children in their middle childhood are:

Cognitive effects:

Excessive television watching have harmful effects on a child's learning and academic performance. One reason is because the amount of time spent watching television is more than spent in classrooms for many children.

Physical effects:

• Since television watching does not require any physical activity, children are more prone to obesity when they indulge in excessive watching.
• Also excessive watching takes away time from physical activities, sports and exercises, again leading to unhealthy body structure and other physical issues such as body aches, eye problems, etc.
• Many advertisements promote unhealthy eating practices too, which again impact children and their physical health.
• With the increased importance given to a particular body image, especially among girls, television can also lead to eating disorders.
• Many television shows and movies portray the consumption of alcohol and tobacco in a positive way, thereby encouraging it.

Psychosocial effects:

• Violent contents make children more violent in nature, a claim that is backed by many researches.
• Irresponsible sexual behaviour has been mostly shown in a positive light in television shows and movies, which encourages teenage sex and its harmful effects.
• Advertisements make children fall under a pressure of owning certain products or living a certain lifestyle which might otherwise be difficult in their real life.

Television/ Movies and brain function:

Research has shown that too much exposure to television changes the anatomical structure of a child's brain and lowers verbal abilities. Excessive watching leads to heavier hypothalamus (impacting the emotional responses), septum (impacting arousal), sensorimotor areas (impacting aggression levels) and visual cortex (impacting vision).

Positive influences of television:

• Certain television shows have positive values such as patriotism, racial harmony, cooperation, kindness and the like which children can learn.
• Some movies are informational such as autobiographical movies. Similarly many television shows also can make children learn about various places, animals, nature, etc.
• Many advertisements also positively impact a child. For example on food habits, values, etc.

In his Bioecological model, Bronfenbrenner includes time as an important factor changing people and environment. He focused on predicting a pattern of associations among ecological, genetic and cognitive variables as a function of proximal processes. He proposed that television shows' or movies' form, power, content and direction would impact the proximal processes affecting development as a joint function of biopsychological characteristics of the child.