In this day and age, the amount of time that children spend staring at the screen has increased at an alarming rate. Many individuals argue that this phenomenon may bring some damaging effects on children’s mental well-being. In my opinion, I partly agree with this argument because exposure to inappropriate content can cause many serious metal health disorders; however, these activities may bring positive impacts on children mental abilities by helping them relax and release stress.
On the one hand, TV programs and video games are often designed and catered to adult audiences to enjoy, which means they may contain unsuitable content for children to consume. In other words, if children are constantly exposed to these kinds of content, they may develop a distorted view of the world, leading to anti-social behaviours. In addition, children often do not have enough mental capacity to understand and process certain kinds of subject matters that appear on TV or computer games. Therfore, they may get stressed out by the amount of information that they are getting access to, resulting in the development of mental health issues such as anxiety, and depression.
On the other hand, watching television and playing computer games are great entertainment options for children to enjoy themselves and blow off some steam after stressful school hours. This means when children have a channel to vent their pressure and frustration, they will less likely to suffer from mental health problems. Moreover, there are plethora of TV programs and games that are specifically tailored toward children, some of which also bring educational values. To illustrate, a research from Harvard University has shown that educational TV programs have better effect on improving social skills of children borned with innate metal disorders such as autism.
In conclusion, I agree that children should avoid spend too much time on watching TV and playing video games because it is the direct root cause of mental health problems; however, controlled screen time can have positive impact on children metal development.