Protect your Child’s Mind from Video Games and TV
Covid or no Covid, technology is an awesome babysitter. Any parent can relate with the trouble of handling young ones in the house, and the relief it gives you to know that there is something that can keep them busy even if just for a while as you attend to something else. But we all need to take a step back and look into what these ‘babysitters’ are doing to our children, and especially to their minds in the long-term.
Every brain has a ‘map’
Stephen Covey, famous for his book 7 habits of highly effective people, associates the shaping of deep attitudes to ‘maps’ in our minds, which are perspectives and assumptions that determine how we interpret and react to situations. These ‘maps’ are formed by what the mind is fed, through seeing and hearing.
Everything they see or hear is stored in the mind
Verifiable research has proven that the human mind records everything that happens to them. Most of these experiences, we do not remember, but they are the ones that form the ‘maps’ that determine our attitudes and control our actions without us necessarily being fully aware of it. Children, especially, record acts of violence more deeply than adults since it is at a young age (especially under 7yrs) that they are more permeable to what their environment has to offer.
Innocent ‘Spider Man’ could result to a violent child
At a young age, children cannot differentiate between the violence of TV and video games, and that of real life. Unfortunately, most heroes in children’s TV shows acquire their heroic titles from being violent, and children continue to absorb the connection between heroism and violence into their subconscious. Way into the future, such children depict violent and aggressive behaviour because of this.
The risk of mental disorders
It is also proven that many mental disorders are as a result of experiences that people had at a very young age. Unfortunately, in the age of TV and video games, children don’t have to live in a physically violent environment in order to experience violence. In fact, the popularity of these TV shows and video games rises with increased graphic scenes. Also, technology has evolved in such a way that they are made to look more and more realistic by the day.
Protect your child
Jeffrey Pickens, a popular psychologist, advices that one of the ways to change people’s attitudes is by addressing their cognitive and emotional components, and this is what TV and video games do. That is why parents ought to be cautious before letting their children interact with any of them.
