Children spend over 1680 minutes a week watching television. Per year, the average child spends 1,500 hours a year watching television and playing video games, while they only spend 900 hours a year in school. The television and video games need to be reduced or cut out of the American home in order to influence healthier lifestyles for children by introducing more beneficial alternatives to occupy their time.
Most children use television and video games as their sole resource for entertainment, which, in turn, can become a very unhealthy habit. Spending countless hours in front of a television or playing a video game is not exactly the best idea for a growing child. This time wasted could be used for other activities that can benefit a child. Many children are not involved in any recreational activity. Parents tend to use television as a babysitter instead of spending quality time with their children in the outdoors. The more a child stays inside, the more accustomed to a lazy lifestyle they become. This leads to childhood obesity and numerous health issues in the future. Out of habit, a child will start choosing television over everything that includes physical activity.
This can be easily fixed with added physical activity to replace gaming and the viewing of television. On average, a child who plays outside burns 268 calories per hour. With children in front of a television for 28 hours a week, just cutting this margin in half will greatly benefit a child’s health. If a child plays outside just half of the time that they are normally watching television, they will burn off 3,752 calories in one week. This will not only promote and insure a healthy lifestyle; this will help to burn excess energy.