{"id":85,"date":"2007-09-27T13:15:36","date_gmt":"2007-09-27T13:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2007-10-01T13:43:22","modified_gmt":"2007-10-01T13:43:22","slug":"tv-beats-family-hands-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/tv-beats-family-hands-down\/","title":{"rendered":"TV beats family, hands-down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sad but unsurprising results of a UK survey show that children spend far more time watching TV than spending time with family<\/a>, or anything else. A survey of of 1,800 families with primary school-age children was part of research accompanying the government-backed Booktime<\/a> literacy project.\u00a0 The survey suggested that children were more likely to be watching television or playing alone or with friends, playing computer games or watching DVDs than spending any time with their parents.\u00a0 Family time is marginalised, with shared meals lasting an average of 43 minutes per day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and 18% of families sharing only 17 minutes together. Parents can not expect much help from children – with 38% saying their nine-year-old did no tidying up or household chores of any kind and 29% saying they helped for less than 30 minutes per week.\u00a0 The biggest single home activity for children was watching television – an average of 7 hours and 46 minutes per week. Reading occupied a weekly average of 3 hours and 51 minutes.\u00a0 The survey also suggested that the higher a father’s earnings, the more likely he is to read with his children.\u00a0 But it is the opposite for mothers – the more that they earn the less likely they are to read with their children.<\/p>\n

While TV is useful (if nothing else it can offer exposure to new ideas and audio visual stimulation) it is plainly being used as a child-minder, to the detriment of children.\u00a0 Learning social skills, which starts in the home, is critical to social interaction later in life.\u00a0 Parents are compromising their children’s emotional intelligence and probably their cognitive intelligence potential too.\u00a0 Written communication is far more critical to success later in life and if people are not good readers, their writing will be compromised as will their comprehension.\u00a0 The failure of parents to create a family in which people chat and play with each other is blamed on the need to work to earn to “make a good life for our children”.\u00a0 However, this is increasingly proved to be fallacy as children grow up without knowing their parents and loose out on the qualities that make being human stimulating and rewarding – social interaction.<\/p>\n

It seems that we have replaced the well educated nanny of times past with a box of tricks, instead of using the time afforded by modern conveniences to have a family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sad but unsurprising results of a UK survey show that children spend far more time watching TV than spending time with family, or anything else. A survey of of 1,800 families with primary school-age children was part of research accompanying the government-backed Booktime literacy project.\u00a0 The survey suggested that children were more likely to be …
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