Our friends in Safermedia have highlighted the following campaigns to us, which we would like to bring to your attention:
1. Frontpage Campaign re Pornographic Magazines
This urges the Government to introduce measures to ensure that these magazines are not displayed at or below children’s eye-level, near children’s publications or without opaque sleeving; to establish an independent UK regulator to replace out-of-date and ineffective legislation; and to introduce regulations so that magazines are assigned age ratings like films and DVDs:
http://www.thefrontpagecampaign.org.uk/Petition.aspx
2. CUT (Christians Unplug your Televisions)
“TV programmes directed at children should carry a government health warning”:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/12644
Please pray and act now, and leave comments (moderated) here:
October 18, 2011 at 8:48 am |
As deputy headmaster of a large inner-urban comprehensive school I first discovered the harmful effects of television on schoolchildren as long ago as 1982. I have monitored the situation very closely ever since and have become increasingly alarmed, especially as everything I predicted has come to pass. The tragedy is that it is now simply accepted as normal – which it should not be.
December 21, 2011 at 5:17 pm |
Dear Mr Worsley
A great deal of resarch has been done on the affects of the TV on children the problem is the most powerful form of the media, the TV will not give this work any air time. Here is an extract form CUT’s latest newsletter on the subject.
Professor of Pediatrics Dimitri Christakis in a conclusion to his study ‘The effects of infant media usage’ says ‘No studies to date have demonstrated benefits associated with early infant TV viewing. The preponderance of existing evidence suggests the potential for harm. Parents should exercise due caution in exposing infants to excessive media.’1 A 2007 Seattle Children’s Research Institute study showed that for every hour per day infants spent watching DVDs and videos they learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos.
Dr Ari Brown, managing director of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP’s,) council on communications and media, recently stated that ‘Children learn to think creatively, problem solve, and develop reasoning and motor skills at early ages through unstructured, unplugged play.
There are some research studies that suggest that TV is educational and these studies have been highlighted by those who support children’s TV. At CUT we are calling for an open debate that covers all research this is why we have a government epetition requesting a parliamentary debate. If the concluding to this debate is that children’s TV does not harm children then so be it. CUT has so many other reasons to persuade Catholics and others to give up the TV. Rendering blasphemy as entertainment is enough reason in its own right let along the sexualisation of older children.
British Psychologist and broadcaster Dr Aric Sigman has no doubt regarding the harm the TV does to children. In his book Remotely Controlled he goes to the heart of the issue. The brains of very young children are rapidly developing and the TV hinders this. He states that new research by the London Institute of Psychiatry found that early TV exposure significantly increases the risk of ADHD for every hour a child per day there is a nine per cent increase in attentional damage.
regards Stefano Mazzeo for Christians Unplug your Televisions