Recently, psychologists have more often had to deal with very distorted behavior of children. On the one hand, stiffness and underdevelopment of speech. On the other hand - strong aggressiveness and off-scale demonstrativeness. Such a child is embarrassed to answer the question, but at the same time he is not afraid to grimace in front of other people's adults. They behave uncontrollably, hyperexcitable, inattentive, models of bad behavior attract them like a magnet, and they seem to not hear an adult. These children love action films and refuse to watch our domestic cartoons. Due to their emotional underdevelopment, the content of our cartoons eludes their understanding. All these children are passionate about computers and TVs from an early age.
The negative impact of modern media on the development of children is obvious to specialists.
1. Contemporary art changes and deforms the psyche of the child, influencing the imagination, giving new attitudes and patterns of behavior. False and dangerous values burst into children's consciousness from the virtual world: a “culture” of strength, aggression, rude and vulgar behavior, which leads to hyperexcitability of children.
2. In Western cartoons there is a fixation on aggression. The repeated repetition of scenes of sadism, when a cartoon character hurts someone, causes children to fixate on aggression and contributes to the development of appropriate behavioral models.
3. Children repeat what they see on the screens, this is a consequence of identification. By identifying with a creature, deviant behavior, which is not punished or even blamed on the screen, children imitate him and learn his aggressive behavior patterns. Albert Bandura, back in 1970, said that one television model could be emulated for millions.
4. Killing, in computer games, children experience a sense of satisfaction, mentally violating moral norms. In virtual reality, the scale of human feelings is absent: killing and suppressing a child does not experience ordinary human emotions: pain, sympathy, empathy. On the contrary, the usual feelings are distorted here, instead of them the child gets pleasure from the blow and insult and his own permissiveness.
4. Aggression in cartoons is accompanied by beautiful, bright pictures. The characters are beautifully dressed, or are in a beautiful room, or a beautiful scene is simply drawn, which is accompanied by murder, a fight, and other aggressive behavior patterns, this is done in order for the cartoon to attract. Because if, on the basis of already existing ideas about beauty, we infuse pictures of sadism, then the already established ideas are blurred.
Thus, aesthetic perception, a new human culture is formed. And children already want to watch these cartoons and films, and they are already perceived by them as the norm. Children are drawn to them, and do not understand why adults with traditional ideas about beauty, about the norm do not want to show them to them.
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5. Often Western cartoon characters are ugly and outwardly disgusting. What is it for? The point is that the child identifies himself not only with the character's behavior. The mechanisms of imitation in children are reflexive and so subtle that they can catch the slightest emotional changes, the smallest facial expressions. Monsters are evil, stupid, insane. By identifying with such characters, children correlate their feelings with the expression on their faces. And they begin to lead accordingly: it is impossible to adopt evil facial expressions and remain kind-hearted in soul, adopt a senseless grin and strive to “gnaw the granite of science”, as in the program “Sesame Street”.
6. The atmosphere of the video market is permeated with murderers, rapists, sorcerers, and other characters, communication with whom you would never choose in real life. And children see all this on TV screens. In children, the subconscious is not yet protected by common sense and life experience, which makes it possible to distinguish between the real and the conventional. For a child, everything he sees is a reality that captures for life. The TV screen with the violence of the adult world has replaced grandmothers and mothers, reading, familiarizing with the true culture. Hence the growth of emotional and mental disorders, depression, teenage suicide, unmotivated cruelty in children.
7. The main danger of television is associated with the suppression of will and consciousness, similar to what is achieved by drugs. American psychologist A. Mori writes that prolonged contemplation of the material, tired eyes, produces hypnotic numbness, which is accompanied by a weakening of will and attention. With a certain duration of exposure, light flashes, flickering and a certain rhythm begin to interact with the brain's alpha rhythms, on which the ability to concentrate depends, and disorganize the cerebral rhythm and develop attention disorder with hyperactivity disorder.
8. The flow of visual and auditory information, which does not require concentration and mental effort, is perceived passively. This is eventually transferred to real life, and the child begins to perceive it in the same way. And it is more and more difficult to concentrate on the task, to make a mental or volitional effort. The child gets used to doing only what does not require effort. He hardly turns on in the classroom, with difficulty perceives educational information. And without active mental activity, the development of nerve connections, memory, associations does not occur.
9. A computer and a TV set takes childhood away from children. Instead of active games, experiencing real emotions and feelings and communicating with peers and parents, knowing oneself through the surrounding living world, children spend hours, and sometimes days and nights at the TV and computer, depriving themselves of the opportunity for development that is given to a person only in childhood.
We can offer for the attention of the readers some recommendations of children's neuropathologists and psychologists on the preservation of the psychosomatic health of children.
* Children under three years old should not watch TV. And if a child has suffered perinatal encephalopathy, or he has convulsions for fever, or he has a head injury, meningitis, if he has increased excitability, poor sleep, early refusal of daytime sleep, stuttering, tics, then up to 5-6 years …
* Healthy children 3-4 years old can spend 15 minutes watching TV. 5-6 year old children 30 min., Younger schoolchildren 1-1.5 hours 2-3 times a week.
* Virtual images attract and create psychological dependence, primarily because they stimulate overexcitation of the nervous system and disharmony of brain rhythms, which occur due to speed, brightness, and the effect of "flickering". Therefore, it is necessary for adults first to watch cartoons and films that they want to show to children, paying attention to whether they will cause overexcitation of the nervous system.
* Up to 7 years of age, children's consciousness does not have a protective barrier against virtual aggression, only after 12 years of age children learn to separate virtual and real reality. Therefore, do not leave your child alone with a TV, computer. He himself will defend himself against virtual aggression, he cannot.
* Consider the factors of harmful physiological effects of electromagnetic radiation when a child is working with a computer:
- increased fatigue, irritability, exhaustion of the nervous system
- sleep disorder, impaired memory and attention
- an increase in the body's allergic reactions
- changes in the musculoskeletal system
- specific pain in the wrist and fingers when working with the keyboard
- development of myopia
Today, only you and I, dear parents, can protect our children from that violence, from that destructive and chaotic energy that bursts into our lives and keep our children healthy with the desire to live and love this world. I hope my little bit helps you with this.