Television appears to be replacing parents as a child's source of lifestyle information.

Did you ever wonder just what effect TV has on the dynamics of your family's life or even on the minds of your children

Programming and advertising that is presented on the television is targeted at influencing the thinking of you and your children. Yes, your children. People are trying to mold your children's attitudes so that they will want you to purchase certain products, whether the type of foods they eat or the birthday or Christmas presents you choose.
Today the practice of marketing to the young has become a standard business practice. Television programs are often written for the young audience. Even the commercials shown on such programming are designed to attract the interest of youngsters who then exert a powerful influence on the spending power of their parents. It is interesting that children under 8 years of age can't distinguish the difference between regular programming and commercials.
The typical American home has the television on for an average of seven hours and 13 minutes per day. With improved satellite and cable access, these numbers w ill probably increase. The average 18-year-old has already watched 22,000 hours of television, more time than the total hours spent in school. During these many hours of viewing people are exposed to 350,000 commercials It is logical to conclude that TV viewing replaces playing studying and reading. In their lifetimes your children will hear more spoken words from the television than they will from you. Your television will have a greater opportunity to influence your children's attitudes toward sex food choices and methods of resolving conflict than you will.

In the typical American home, children will view 200,000 acts of violence by the time they are 18 years old This calculates our to nearly 12,000 acts per year, or 1,000 per month. Violence is often seen as a reasonable or suitable solution to problems.
So when you get a call from your child's school and are told that your youngster just punched someone in the nose you might logically wonder where on earth they learned to solve their problems m such a violent way Though we can't suggest that TV viewing caused this act of violence we can suggest that: there is a strong likelihood that your child was influenced by these media exposures. We think it is fair to say that if all of us grew up in an environment where no one ever punched anyone in the nose, we probably wouldn't consider this method of resolving our problems when faced with conflict.

Clearly, parents should be the sex educators of their children. Guess what? They aren't. Research has shown that only one third of parents discuss sex with their kids. So they probably get this instruction at school. But remember, kids spend more time watching TV than attending school. TV exposes children to more than 14,000 sexual situations and countless amounts of innuendo per year. On the soap-operas kids are exposed to eight extramarital affairs for every one sexual encounter between spouses. Did you ever hear an ad talk about contracting the herpes virus or any other sexually transmitted disease? Listen up again--by default and based upon pure hours of exposure, the television is the sex educator of America's children today.