Television helps in building child cognition. Several studies have assessed children’s programs such as Sesame Street. All these studies find that young children who view Sesame Street often have more developed cognition in identifying shapes, numbers and letter than those who do not view the program (Fisch 2004). Besides, these children do extremely well in academics when they join high school. Conversely, watching television may impair cognition in children. Williams (1986) evaluated cognition in children using a test called alternate uses. He found that the scores of the test dropped after children watched television. Although these findings might have been true, some factors that had no relationship with watching television could have influenced the findings of this study. Some of these factors could have been tiredness or boredom due to repeating the same test. The work of Williams (1986) is also disputable because children, who like watching, usually follow scenes keenly so that they can recall all the events that crop from week to week. Rather than impairing a child’s cognitive ability, such an activity should help in developing a child’s cognitive ability. This point can also be supported by the work of McLuhan (1964), who argues that television requires high levels of audience participation. Hence, watching television builds cognition as a child takes part by thinking actively in the entire program. Television acts as a valuable resource through providing viewers with the latest information about what is happening around them. For instance, a person gets to know when calamities such as Hurricanes strike some parts of the world, or when Iraq is fighting with America. Such information helps people to understand themselves more as they are able to tell why some leaders of the world may concentrate so much on some issues that other leaders, in other parts, may not consider. For instance, people can get to understand why the American government has to budget for so much money in security and disaster management as opposed to other governments. However, television does not act as a valuable resource in all topics. Essential topics such as employment openings receive little address from televisions despite the fact that most people are jobless. Hence, we can argue that televisions allow people to understand others, but it offers little when it comes to economic and personal development. Television helps people to understand and appreciate their gender roles. Men dominate most programs on television because few women have jobs. In efforts to investigate the role that television has on making people understand gender, Williams (1986) conducted a study on how children classified men and women after watching some television shows. All children received a list of traits, and they had to classify these traits depending on whether they were common in boys or girls. After the study, Williams (1986) concluded that television influenced the understanding of men and women roles among children. Understanding gender roles is essential, but it can lead to gender stereotyping. For instance, girls may refuse to take up subjects that will develop them into media workers because they asso