Television Alters Child’s Brain Structure: How to stop your child from watching TV?

Those who were born in 80’s must have remembered how cartoons programs where only telecasted on Sunday mornings. Now TV has more than 10 channels that telecast children programs for whole day. With abundance of cartoon programs and kids show, today’s children are turning addicted to TV and gradually parents are now finding it difficult to stop their kids from watching Television.

So, why you should stop your child from watching TV?

Recently, Neuroscientists in Japan have out that watching television alters a child’s brain structure. The more hours a child watches the TV, the more his/her brain structure will change. The brain regions that are bulked up in children watching more television include grey matter increases in the hypothalamus, septum, sensory motor areas and visual cortex, but also in a frontal lobe region (frontopolar cortex), which is known to lower verbal IQ.  Tests confirmed that the children’s verbal IQ had lowered in proportion to the hours of TV watched, ranging from 0 to more than 4 hrs/day. 

How to stop your child from watching?

1. Discuss the ill effects of watching TV and restrict the watching hours: Sit with your child and tell them how TV is harmful for everyone, discuss with them how they can spend their TV time on other interesting activities, which they were missing and restrict the TV watching time.


2. Be firm: if your child is already TV addicted then they will whine, argue, scream to every TV program they have been watching, i.e. the child may not be willing to accept curtailment of watching TV for hours. So be firm on your decision.


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