subject: Extracurricular Activities: Effects of Television Viewing [print this page] Popularity of television viewing Contemporary students may choose from a wide range of extracurricular activities. They are free to attend debate or drama clubs or to go in for sports. Still, some of them prefer to stay at home after classes and watch television gradually turning into a coach potato. Though numerous researches demonstrated the devastating effects of devoting too much time to TV viewing, this activity enjoys wide popularity among adolescents. The inverse relationship between the time spent on watching TV and learning achievement scores does not frighten young people. Certainly, watching educational programs or political news, students might only broaden their scope. The problem is that young people rarely give preference to these programs. They enjoy watching talk or reality shows as well as music channels. The information retrieved from these programs does not contribute to students' personal or intellectual development. It is important to raise the public awareness of detrimental effects of giving preference to undemanding entertainment. Mechanisms of influencing the learning achievements It should be noted that the inverse relationship between television viewing and academic learning scores appears to be quite modest. The results of most researches demonstrated not more than 10 percent deviation between scores of those who devote the most time to television and those who devote the least time to it. The additional consequences of great television use might be even more serious: 1. Devoting too much time to television, students are not interested in books, depriving themselves of opportunity to develop their critical thinking. 2. Wasting great amounts of time on TV programs, students cannot develop their basic learning skills and work on their assignments hard. 3. Preference to undemanding entertainment has negative impact on student's intellectual development. At the same time a film or two will not do any harm to a young person, and these are only devastating effects of overuse of television that have been discussed in the article.
Extracurricular Activities: Effects of Television Viewing
