What are the negative effects of media on childhood language development?

In America, the media do not teach language skills to children, and in fact do the opposite. For one thing, the media cannot respond to the children's use of language, can offer no correction or reinforcement, but only continue to blither on at them like a malfunctioning robot. And for another, American children listening to the media are exposed to the most unskillful, tongue-tied speakers of the language. Media people are famously inarticulate mumblers who must major in "Communications" in college in order to pronounce their own names clearly.

Some negative effects are that violence on television prevents a more comprehensive and larger vocabulary of children, because of the swearing, sex and drugs that are so rampant in television shows. Characters engaging in acts of violence, swearing, sex and drugs tend to be of lower than average intelligence (perhaps not including sex unles it is pornographic sex). They use short or even incomplete sentences and this is what the children pick up. They emulate the tough and bad language they hear on television at school among their friends. They fail to learn the art of complex and abstract thought. Sometimes it can be so ingrained in them that inadvertenly perhaps by habit a child at the Thanksgiving dinner table might say something like "Please pass the f----ing cranberry sauce." , without even knowing it was wrong. And of course texting has all but destroyed spelling and grammar in the English language, but don't get me started on that.

First answer by ID3260069633. Last edit by Bennett hammond. Contributor trust: 194 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 42 [recommend question]