European Union Forums

[Terry]

According to last datas,45% children spent half of their free time in front of TV. One family in France has excluded wathing TV to their children.They play,read,learning to play chess.. Internet is not banned. What is the reason? They say that kids see much violence, also TV is not interactive nowadays.As a fact, TV can be a reason of abuse. How do you think, is it necessary to ban watching TV to children?

[Big_Becka]

If you ban TV, you make it more desirable! However, I think it is good to limit TV. When I was a teenager, my parents couldn't afford a TV license, so we had no TV for around 2 years I had a friend who grew up with no TV at all.

Having no TV is brilliant! I could do my homework each evening without distractions. I read books, I learned to play music, I took up art (sketching most Sundays) and I listened to intellectual programmes on the radio (instead of the rubbish on TV!) I spent a lot of time walking and cycling with my father, and became much healthier than I had been. Most of my friends couldn't understand how I found the time to do so much!

There were two problems. My school expected us to watch certain documentaries on the TV, and were worried that my education would suffer. Also, my mother found it very difficult to live without a TV - she didn't work, and felt very isolated without the news and the soap operas. For some reason, newspapers and radio programmes were not the same for her - she didn't like the idea that everyone was active instead of watching TV together as a family

With regards to violence... There are some very violent books in the world! I read 'Trainspotting' as a young teenager, which is much more violent than the film - however, the film is Cert. 18 and only shown on TV late at night

[Nathan]

As to me, I can't live without TV. When I come home, what I do first is switching on TV. Sometimes I think that it is a kind of dependance. We, adults,can choose the channels deliberately, but childern very often watch TV unconciously . Our TV is rubbished, that is not a secret. We should keep an eye on what our kids is watching. Even cartoons can be cruel nowadays ("Tom and Jerry").

[Lorry]

I don't think that it is a good idea because children should develop in a real world, not candid (which have created their parents). They should know what is going on in this world, on this earth, they should watch TV news, discovery channels, some interesting shows, of course they should not watch brutality and violence, but the rest I think they should watch and not all the day but rarely, maybe some hours per day.