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The American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP), one of the few organizations not influenced by the big money of big corporations, warns that media (from traditional television to mobile phones, Pads and Tabs, online and offline gaming and social media) can be a potent source of harm to the children’s health.
According to AAP, “the average 8 to10-year-old child spends nearly 8 hours a day with a variety of different media, while the older children and teenagers spend 11 hours a day.

The presence of a TV in a child’s bedroom increases these figures even more, and 71% of children and teenagers report having a TV in their bedroom. Young people now spend more time with media than they do in their school.

So, we cannot ignore the role played by media in the lives of children. This role could be two-fold: first, role of media due to its format of presentation. Media, especially TV, stimulates the child only through visual and auditory channels. And, there is no human or natural type interaction with the child. This is not very conducive with the brain development of the child, whatever the contents of the programmes are.

Our brains are made up of neurons, the cells with long hairy projections, which communicate with other neurons in the brain, found in millions, through these hairy connections. The impulses that travel along these cells are actually electric impulses.

They jump from the end of one cell’s hairy projection to the end of another through a little gap called a synaptic cleft. This junction is called a synapse. There are millions and billions of such junctions, synapses, in the brain. More synapses one has got, higher one’s intelligence becomes.

The new born baby does not have many ‘useful’ synapses in her brain. She needs her neurons, which are already fully formed inside her brain to connect. And connected in the right way. Then only she would be very intelligent, and be ready with a great platform to take-off to face life.

Brain, or the child, has to be stimulated in the right way for the neurons to make lots of right connections. The stimulations have to be pleasant, frequent and interactive. For example, let us take an instance where a father tells a story to the child. The child listens to father’s voice and other noises he makes, it watches his face and other gestures he makes, it feels his warmth, if the child is on his lap, it feels his touch and so on.

Above all, the response of the child would induce changes in the way her father tells the story. In other words, the child’s environment, which is largely its father now, is fully responsive to the child. This is the interaction that is critically needed for the neurons to make the right type of connections, and lots of them.

TV is a very poor way of stimulating the child’s brain in the right way. Actually, too much of TV may do the reverse; reduce the number of synapses in a child’s brain. The result is reduction of intelligence. This does not really sound surprising, does it? And it is not a surprise at all for the AAP to strictly recommend to:

•    Limit the amount of total entertainment screen time from 1 to 2 hours per day.
•    Discourage screen media exposure for children 2 years of age.
•    Keep the TV set and Internet-connected electronic devices out of the child’s bedroom.
•    Model active parenting by establishing a family home and use plan for all media. As part of the plan, enforce a mealtime and bedtime “curfew” for media devices, including mobile phones. Establish reasonable but firm rules about mobile phones, texting, Internet and social media use.

 The other role of media is the role played by the content of presentation. Media CAN, and DO, give harmful and dangerous messages to children.
Wake up! Not clear?

Well, all what you have to do is to sit and watch the programmes watched by your child, from toddler to teenager. However, you need to be very critical, alert and skilful. Here are some common messages embedded in many children’s programmes, including cartoons:

1. You need to do lot of shopping and spend lot of money and come home with lots of bags in order to be happy/trendy/cool.
2. Smoking is so cool.
3. Alcohol relaxes you.
4. Adults smoke and drink alcohol before they have intimate moments.
5. Eating lots and lots of burgers and other junk food is really a heroic thing to do.
6. Somehow appearing on TV is a lifetime achievement.
7. Girls are always sexy and boys are always macho.
8. Going through your belongings/cupboard very fast throwing whatever you get your hands on all over the room until you find what you are looking for, is a normal behaviour.
9. Somebody being in great pain, for an example, after falling on the ground, is really comical.
10. The villain is okay to be slowly tortured and subject to a cruel death.
11. It is always the American who saves the world from the Russian/Chinese and other elements in the end.
These messages tend to, over time, change the values systems of our children. After a while, we might feel that our children are so different. As if they are from another planet. This is well-recognised by the APP, and they recommend to:

•    Monitor what media children are using and surfing, including any Websites they are visiting and social media sites they may be using.
•   Co-view TV, movies, and videos with children and teenagers, and use this as a way of discussing important family values. All the steps described in this article would help us to counter some of these harmful messages.  This is critically essential in today’s world. One can only imagine what such harmful messages would do to a child whose brain is already low in synapses due to excessive TV watching!