hyderabad the incident involving the fatal death of a 12yearold influenced by a television show has brought to light the largescale influence that tv programmes and online videos have on children alarmed city psychologist advised parents to not allow young kids to watch tv for more than 20 minutes and insisted that the content viewed be closely monitored by the eldersspeaking to toi dr pra veen kumar c a psychiatrist whose area of expertise includes child psychology said that children are vulnerable to such content particularly cartoons and added that they tend to emulate it without realising the consequences he said that on average he sees at least four kids who are addicted to cartoonson an average i see four to five kids a week who see cartoons for hours togetherhowever i feel the problem is mostly with parents than children as television has actually become a proxy parent for these kids without realising what they are do ing parents encourage kids to watch tv while feeding them or in their free and this has a serious effect on a childs psychology it is very harmful for kids as they tend to follow what cartoons shows preach also when kids try to imitate cartoons parents most of the time take it on a lighter note and try to play along which makes a child believe what he is doing is right said kumarhe said that children should not be allowed to watch cartoons for more than 20 minutes and stressed on the importance of scrutinising the shows that their wards watchc beena professor retd of psychology osmania university said that children are not capable of drawing a line between what they watch on the screen and real life and this is where the problems beginwhen a child starts watching a show repeatedly it is time to stop them as they are getting too familiar with itif not intervened they will start imagining themselves as that particular character and try to enact whatever that character does she said and advised parents to limit and monitor the tv hours for childrenshe said that children should be encouraged to play outside rather than asking them to watch tv all the time so that they are more connected with the real world rather than the reel world