Recently, television, tablets, smartphones and other electronic entertainment have become children’s favorite entertainment. Many parents consider watching cartoons, TV shows, and computer games to be a useful or, at least, harmless pastime for children. Already a six-month-old baby, who has barely learned to sit, is placed in front of a tablet and left alone with an electronic “nanny”. The child can be fed by putting spoon after spoon into the mouth while the child is in a daze in front of the screen. One of the first skills is mastering a TV remote control, and parents are proud of their offspring: “He already understands which button to press.” Unfortunately, many parents perceive their child as an incomplete and miniature copy of an adult, based on the fact that children have the same abilities and forms of thinking as adults. But conscious and responsible behavior is not the initial, but the final link in the process of development and education. A child is born an extremely dependent creature incapable of independent life, although some important survival functions have already been developed. But it is the newborn’s nervous system that is in its infancy. The brain of a newborn, of course, is already largely formed, but functionally it is not yet developed. The areas of the cerebral cortex are in a “sleeping” state. They “turn on” gradually, following the processes of development of the senses. The development of vision, hearing, touch, and movement creates conditions for the growth and organization of the nervous system. The process of mastering these and many other abilities leads to the formation of connections between the senses and the corresponding areas of the brain. Thus, any direct activity of the child forms new neural connections and “switches on” the corresponding brain structures. This brain ability is not lost with age, but in childhood there are periods of formation of brain structures that are difficult to catch up if they are missed. If the sense organs develop naturally, then the corresponding brain structures are built on top of each other like floors. Accordingly, if one or more sense organs are not fully activated, then the corresponding brain structures remain in their infancy. The “building” of brain structures turns out to be fragile if one or more “floors” are missing. At the beginning of his development, a child learns not with his head, but with his whole body. At this age, the entire experience of comprehension lies in specific actions with real objects. Everything that the baby sees must be grabbed, touched, felt and tasted. That is why we must realize the danger of young children colliding with the imaginary reality of the television screen, within which such experience necessary for their development is not available. The parents’ home is a specific three-dimensional space accessible to the sensory bodily experience of the child, who can run around and climb all the rooms, touch everything, look at it, explore all the corners. But while the TV or tablet is on, the child is completely excluded from this experience. The reality of the screen and the reality of the room create a pathological splitting of the process of perception into a sphere where full sensory activity is possible, and a sphere where such grasping is impossible. The perception of unnatural screen images forms a distorted vision of reality. Time spent watching cartoons and computer games is wasted and interferes with natural development. At the beginning of life, the formation of bodily and mental functions occurs, with the help of which the child begins to explore the world. The body of a newborn is not yet developed and for its final formation various impulses and irritations coming to the child from the external environment are necessary. Everything that a child perceives in the first years of life, and everything that he does, leaves its mark on his body as a whole and on the nervous system in particular. He is actively involved in the environment with his whole being, as if he is entirely an organperception. The formation of the psyche depends on sensory impressions and the environment in which the child is located. The shaping influence of the immediate environment gradually decreases by the tenth year of life and ends approximately by the age of eighteen. During this period, abilities that are significant for the rest of life are formed. The opportunities lost for development during these years cannot be subsequently made up with the same intensity and depth. Sensitive periods for the development of certain mental functions then steadily “close.” Here are some of them:• The first, decisive stage of brain development is completed at the age of three. If at this stage the child has limited access to the full range of possible activities and experiences, then many neural connections are not formed.• The child learns to stand upright, walk and coordinate hand movements in the first four years of life. Between four and ten years of age, he can still develop fine motor skills through exercise; then this ability quickly disappears.• Again, in the first four years of life, under natural conditions, visual acuity and three-dimensional vision develop.• Fine motor skills, which control the ocular muscles and are necessary for targeted scanning of the visual field, are not yet ready by the age of four . For full development, it, as well as fine motor skills of the hands, requires several more years. Until about the ninth year of life, its effectiveness noticeably lags behind the level characteristic of adolescents and adults. According to the latest research, important components of vision control become fully accessible only at the age of eighteen! To a certain extent, meaningless information bombards the eyes, and the longer this happens, the more damage is done to the child's development. It is necessary to pay attention to the immobility that the screen forces the child to. This cannot but cause alarm, since all the functions of the body and brain that are important in this case can only develop through movement. Movement is a child’s element of life. Disabling the movement function at an early age deprives the child of the most important type of activity and causes serious consequences. From all this, only one conclusion can be drawn: there is no question of putting a child under five years old in front of the TV. Programs can be as “targeted for children” as you like, and with the best intentions, but they still cannot compensate for the harm that is caused to a child by such immobility, which is the process of visual perception. Parents and teachers are concerned about the development of the child’s intelligence, but few people know that the body is the basis for the development of volition and consciousness. The number of children who have not developed basic bodily senses has been growing in recent years. Such disorders manifest themselves in hyperactivity syndromes, attention deficit disorder, autism, communication disorders, social maladaptation, speech disorders, etc. are also associated with this. Back in 2003, Rainer Patzlaf, a researcher of the physiological impact of television on the development of children, noted that the ability of children to independently, creatively learn school knowledge is rapidly declining. There are a growing number of students who have difficulty understanding and thinking about abstract connections. Of course, watching television cannot be the only reason for this state of affairs. There are other influences at play here as well. But still, excessive consumption of television, electronic games and the Internet by children from an early age is a very important factor in deviations of their development from the norm. It would be absurd to exclude television, computer games and the Internet: after all, technological advances also provide useful opportunities. The question should be posed differently: what do parents need to know in order to protect their children from the negative effects of television? How to instill in them the right attitude towards entertainment technology? Literature: Adrianov O. S. On the principles of structural and functional organization of the brain. - M., 1999. Vygotsky L.., 2005.