During their wanderings, ancient Jewry happened upon some
of the most abominable practices of the pagan world, including child-sacrifice.
The contrast between the world's wanton violence and promiscuity on the one
hand, and the Torah's pristine standards and sensitivities on the other, must
have been astounding. For those who had seen the dark side of polytheism and yet
knew of a brighter truth, nothing could have been as repulsive as cultures of
idol worship. One would think there was little danger of Jewry being drawn into
pagan rituals. God did not feel the same confidence. He saw a
vulnerability through which even those who knew both paganism's horrors and
Torah's wholesomeness could succumb: If Jewry would bring idols into their own
homes, even for aesthetic enjoyment or academic study, they could corrupt Jewish
sensibilities. "Do not bring an abomination into your house since you will
become accursed like it," He warned His chosen people. "You should utterly
detest [an idol] and utterly abhor it, for it is an objectively cursed thing."1
Ancient Israel needed a commandment to detest the detestable, abhor the
abhorrent, and keep it far from their homes, the Torah teaches, because once
even the most crass influence passes within, it grows gradually less offensive
and more acceptable. Traditional Jews long understood that the home is not
just a dorm and restaurant: It is the center of the child's world, and it is the
heart of the family. As such, it demands protection. Heart infections kill.
Influences that are only offensive on the streets can be deadly in the den. The Television Question Following in their ancestors' footsteps, traditional Jews
guard their hearts, carefully sifting through their generation's popular culture
before allowing it through the front door. Their first question has always been,
"How will this affect my children?" In March 1975, four leading, traditional Jewish scholars
issued an advisory warning about television to traditional Jewish communities.2
Their paper was rooted entirely in Talmudic sources and contained no references
to the scientific literature. Nonetheless, it cited what secular scholars would
term psychological and developmental dangers. It suggested that these dangers
were related to both content and medium, and it recommended that parents not
expose their children to television. At the time, the warning must have seemed
provincial at best to those unfamiliar with the uncanny insight of traditional
Jewish wisdom. In 1975, television research in secular, academic circles
was just beginning. The entire scientific literature consisted of only about 300
research papers and a summary report issued jointly by the United States Surgeon
General and the National Institute of Mental Health.3 The summary
report weakly raised the possibility of an association between television
watching and aggression, but concluded, "a great deal of research remains to be
done before we can have confidence in these conclusions." By 1980, investigators had produced 2,500 studies on the
effects of watching television, and the Talmudic scholars' early warning was
beginning to look less provincial and more prophetic. In 1982, the National
Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
contracted the leading television researchers -- professors from Harvard,
Stanford, the University of North Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, and
Yale -- to summarize scientific opinion about television's safety. Their highly
critical two-volume statement4 failed to gain much attention outside
of academic circles, but it shook the world of research-psychologists and
inspired a flood of further studies about the dangers of television. Thousands
of subsequent investigations confirmed the early findings, and today a rich
literature documents the negative outcomes of exposing children to television. CONTENT Most discussions focus on the deleterious effects of television content (as
opposed to medium), so let us begin our review there. Alcohol In 1993, one out of three high school seniors, one out of four tenth-graders,
and one out of seven eighth-graders got drunk at least once every two weeks.5
Where are so many children learning to abuse alcohol? The 1982 report of the Surgeon General revealed that
alcohol is the most consumed beverage on prime time television shows. Television
characters drink alcohol twice as often as they drink tea or coffee, 14 times as
frequently as soft drinks, and 15 times more often than water.6
Eighty percent of prime-time programs showed or mentioned alcohol consumption,
and in half of these instances it was heavy alcohol consumption - five or more
drinks.7 In 1990, there were 8.1 drinking references or portrayals
per hour on prime- time.8 Of deep concern to the Surgeon General,
"The drinkers are not the villains or the bit players; they are good, steady,
likable characters," and portrayals are entirely devoid of "indications of
possible risks."9 When we consider that, in addition to alcohol
consumption portrayed during programs, the average U.S. citizen also sees
100,000 television advertisements for alcoholic beverages before age twenty-one,10
it seems reasonable to suspect that TV exposure might affect our children's
drinking habits. New Zealand researchers in fact discovered a direct
correlation between frequency of television viewing among 13 to 15 year olds and
quantity of alcohol consumed at age 18. The more TV young teens watched, the
more alcohol they drank three to five years later.11 Researchers from
the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York replicated the New
Zealand findings with a random sampling of 14 to 16-year-old U.S. teens.12
A follow-up study concluded that it was the TV watching that produced the
alcohol consumption (and not the alcohol consumption that encouraged TV
watching).13 A team at Stanford University recently succeeded in
quantifying television's effect on teenage drinking. Studying over 1,500
ninth-grade public high school students in San Jose, California, the Stanford
researchers discovered that "one extra hour of television viewing per day was
associated with an average 9% increase in the risk of starting to drink over the
next eighteen months; [and] similarly, one extra hour of music video [MTV]
viewing per day was associated with an average 31% increase in the risk of
starting to drink over the next eighteen months."14 These
probabilities remained even after controlling for the effects of age, sex,
ethnicity, and other media use. The Stanford team concluded: The findings of this study have important health and
public policy implications... The large magnitudes of the these associations
between hours of television viewing and music video viewing and the subsequent
onset of drinking demand that attempts to prevent adolescent alcohol abuse
should address the adverse influences of alcohol use in the media.15 Each year, students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol -- more
than they spend on soft-drinks, tea, milk, juice, coffee, and books combined.16
Alcohol is implicated in more than 40% of all academic problems and 28% of all
dropouts.17 Alcohol was found to be a factor in 60% of women who were
diagnosed with certain infectious diseases.18 On a typical weekend in
America, an average of one teenager dies every two hours in a car crash
involving alcohol.19 Children who drink recreationally are 7.5 times
more likely to use any illicit drug and 50 times more likely to use cocaine than
children who abstain from alcohol.20 In light of these statistics, we
must consider whether we want our children to absorb TV's messages about alcohol
consumption or whether there is something more productive they could do with
their time. Violence The earliest content-based TV research focused on violence. Between 1952 and
1992 the average number of violent acts per hour ranged from 6.2 to 32.21
In the early 1990a, MTV averaged 22 violent acts per
hour, half of which involved major physical assaults, assaults with weapons, and
threats accompanied by weapons.22 In 1993, the most violent
prime-time shows exhibited as many as 60 acts of violence per hour.23
That year the average child living in the United States watched 10,000 murders,
assaults, and other violent acts on television,24 and by 1997 that
number had climbed to 12,00025 and was still rising. Initially psychologists wondered whether exposure to so
much media violence would affect behavior. Three early studies suggested an
answer. First, Dr. Brandon Centerwall, professor of epidemiology
at the University of Washington, Seattle, led a group of researchers in an
electrifying cross-cultural investigation. The University of Washington project
took advantage of the fact that television was introduced to North America
almost thirty years before it arrived in South Africa. Dr. Centerwall and his
colleagues compared white homicide rates before and after television's arrival
in the United States and Canada with white homicide rates in South Africa during
the same period. Centerwall predicted that he would find a 10 to 15-year
lag between television's arrival and spikes in U.S., Canadian, and South African
murder rates: Given that homicide is an adult activity, if television
exerts its behavior-modifying effects primarily upon children, the initial
"television-generation" would have had to age 10 to 15 years before they would
have been old enough to affect the homicide rate.26 And so he discovered. Initially all three countries had
nearly identical rates. However, the University of Washington team found that
ten to fifteen years after television arrived in the United States and Canada,
white homicide rates in both countries suddenly jumped by 92% and 93%,
respectively. In contrast, in South Africa, where television had yet to arrive,
rates remained consistently low throughout this period. A follow-up study
conducted after television's arrival in South Africa found that white homicide
rates there followed the North American pattern, jumping 130% fourteen years
after television's introduction.27 The University of Washington group also analyzed when
television was introduced into various United States census regions and homicide
rates within those regions. They found a precise correlation between when
television arrived in each U.S. census region and when its homicide rate spiked.28
For example, television was introduced to the West South Central census region
six years after it was introduced to the Middle Atlantic region, and West South
Central homicide rates did not begin to ascend until 1964 -- exactly six years
after the 1958 Middle Atlantic spike began. After successfully testing their
theory against eleven falsifiable hypotheses, the University of Washington
researchers concluded: The timing of the acquisition of television predicts the
timing of the subsequent increase in rates of violence... A doubling of the
homicide rate after everyone is exposed to television implies that the relative
risk of homicide after (prolonged) exposure to television, compared with no
exposure, is approximately 2:1.29 Writing for the Journal of the American Medical
Association, Centerwall stressed: The epidemiological evidence indicates that if,
hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would
today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer
rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults.30 The second experiment to gain widespread attention in
research circles was conducted by Dr. Tannis MacBeth Williams, professor of
psychology at the University of British Columbia. Until the summer of 1973,
television broadcasters had been unable to reach a certain Canadian town (which
Williams dubbed "Notel"), but they expected to resolve these signal reception
difficulties within a year. Williams' team got word that Notel was about to
receive television and quickly identified two other Canadian towns with
demographic profiles identical to Notel but which already possessed television.
Researchers then began a two-year study of randomly selected first- and
second-grade students in all three towns, focusing on rates of objectively
measured noxious physical aggression (e.g., hitting, shoving, and biting). In the two years after television's arrival in Notel,
Williams' team watched while rates of physical aggression among Notel's students
shot up 160%. Over the same period, rates of aggression in the two control towns
remained unchanged. Six groups of university investigators verified that the
only significant difference between Notel and the control communities was the
introduction of television.31 The third early study to grab researchers' attention was
conducted by Drs. Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann, professors of psychology at
the University of Illinois. They followed a large random sampling for 22 years,
from third grade through adulthood, tracking violent behavior and a range of
other habits and environmental stimuli. Eron and Huesmann discovered that the
amount of television children watched at eight years old was the single most
powerful predictor of violent behavior at age thirty - more than poverty,
grades, a single-parent home, or even exposure to real violence.32
Professor Eron told a Newsweek reporter: Of course, not every youngster is affected. Not everyone
who gets lung cancer smoked cigarettes, and not everyone who smokes cigarettes
gets lung cancer. But nobody outside the tobacco industry denies that smoking
causes lung cancer. The size of the [television watching-aggressive behavior]
correlation is the same.33 A follow-up investigation by the University of Illinois
team studied more than a thousand children in Australia, Finland, Israel, the
Netherlands, and Poland over a three-year period. This international sampling
produced identical results: Exposure to television was the greatest determinant
of aggressive behavior.34 These early studies stimulated an avalanche of recent
research: Investigators compared the playground behavior of ordinary groups of
elementary school children with experimental groups who had been shown typically
violent television shows before recess.35 Before and after exposure
to prime-time and children's programming, investigators monitored the behavior
of children living in circumstances so violent that one would expect the effects
of media to be overshadowed.36 Researchers ranked preschoolers for
aggressiveness and then interviewed the children's parents to dtermine the
frequency of the children's television viewing.37 There have been
retrospective surveys, longitudinal studies, and meta-analyses. Tens of
thousands of infants, children, teens and young adults have been studies in
every continent for their reactions to television, and the results have all
produced the same conclusion.38 To date, more than a thousand investigations have
documented a causal link between television viewing and violent behavior, and no
study has contradicted this hypothesis.39 Looking back over decades
of television research, the leader of the University of Illinois team, Professor
Huesmann, observed, "At this time, it should be difficult to find any researcher
who does not believe that a significant positive relation exists between viewing
television violence and subsequent aggressive behavior under most conditions."40 Ten years after their first report, the United States
Surgeon General and National Institute of Mental Health issued an update clearly
stating that the latest evidence "seems overwhelming that [watching] televised
violence and [acting with] aggression are positively correlated in children."41
The Surgeon General's 2001 report cited statistical links between television
watching and violent behavior similar in strength to the evidence linking
smoking and lung cancer.42 Dr. Jeffrey McIntyre, legislative and
federal affairs officer for the American Psychological Association, echoed these
sentiments in an interview with the New York Times: "The evidence is
overwhelming. To argue against it is like arguing against gravity."43 The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
conducted its own battery of investigation and concurred that television
watching produces aggressive children.44 The American Medical
Association's House of Delegates surveyed the burgeoning evidence and declared:
"TV violence threatens the health and welfare of young Americans."45
An American Medical Association "special communication" proclaimed: "Children's
exposure to television and television violence should become part of the public
health agenda, along with safety seats, bicycle helmets, immunizations, and good
nutrition."46 In an editorial entitled "Exposure to Television Poses
a Public Health Concern," the Annals of Epidemiology declared, "Public health's
mandate of prevention, originally used to combat infectious disease, must now be
called forth to address mass media content."47 As Professor Eron
observed, "The scientific debate is over."48 Television makes
children violent. Commercialism Why do broadcasters continue to offer alcohol-related and violent
programming, given the overwhelming data testifying to the damage done by such
fare? Our question stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of television's
clientele. As a writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association
observed: Cable aside, the television industry is not in the
business of selling programs to audiences. It is in the business of selling
audiences to advertisers. Issues of "quality" and "social responsibility" are
entirely peripheral to the issue of maximizing audience size within a
competitive market.49 Television does not exist to entertain us; it exists to
sell to us. Colman McCarthy, professor at Georgetown University and the
University of Maryland, explains, "It is a commercial arrangement, with the TV
set a salesman permanently assigned to one house, and often two or three
salesmen working different rooms."50 Dr. John Condry, professor of
human development and family studies at Cornell University, writes, "The task of
those who program television is to capture the public's attention and to hold it
long enough to advertise a product."51 While this amazes some parents, it is a reality that
everyone in the television industry thoroughly understands. Doug Herzog, while
serving as president of Fox Entertainment, thus justified the level of alcohol,
sex, and violence on his network, saying, "This is all happening because society
is evolving and changing, but the bottom line is people seem to be buying it."52
Gene DeWitt, chairman of one of the leading firms selling television advertising
time, similarly admitted, "There's no point in moralizing whether this is a good
or bad thing. Television is a business whose purpose is gathering audience."53 Indeed, children see one hour of commercials for every
five hours of programs they watch on commercial television.54 This
means that during calendar year 1997, when the average U.S. child watched
television 25 hours a week,55 he spent 260 full hours (or the
equivalent of 6.5 weeks of 40-hour-per-week shifts) just watching commercials. This is significant when we consider that the most
essential product of the advertising industry is hunger. That is, commercials
are intended to create a feeling of lack in the viewer, a deep ache that can
only be assuaged by purchasing the product. As Dr. Neil Postman, chairman of the
Department of Communication Arts at New York University, points out, "What the
advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is
wrong about the buyer."56 So we hand our children over to Madison
Avenue to be told, hundreds of hours a year, how hungry, bored, ugly, and
unpopular they are and will continue to be until they spend (or persuade their
parents to spend) a few more dollars. And then we wonder why our children feel
so hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular, and why they are so needy. Planting the Right Seeds Nicholas Johnson, a former commissioner of the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission, once said, "All television is educational.
The question is, what does it teach?"57 Violence educates. So does
alcohol. So do commercials. These are seeds that television plants. And these are only a sampling of the values and
perspectives that pass directly from TV to child. Television plants other seeds
too. For example, researchers at Syracuse University and State University of New
York discovered that television programs almost never advocate reading books and
lend the impression that one can get all the knowledge one needs from watching
TV. They theorize this might be responsible for the finding that "young people
who view greater amounts of television are more likely to have a decidedly low
opinion of book reading as an activity."58 If we do not approve of
television's portrayals of alcohol and violence; if we think book reading is
important; if our life goals include more altruistic principles, like kindness,
integrity, commitment, faithfulness, and the like; or if the television plants
other seeds incompatible with our basic values, then shouldn't we be concerned
about every minute our children spend sitting before a television absorbing its
perspectives? If the programmers and advertisers are not properly educating our
children, then do we really want to turn our children over to their care? If
television exposes our children to influences we disapprove of, why should we
bring it into our homes? Medium Most popular discussions of television's downside focus
entirely on television's deleterious content, and in doing so they miss at least
half the problem. Perhaps the medium itself, regardless of content, does damage. Achievement and Intelligence Japanese researchers
conducted some of the earliest research on the relationship between television
and impaired academic achievement. In 1962, they published findings that reading
skills declined among Japanese fifth to seventh graders as soon as their family
acquired a television set.59 Two years later, the United States Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare conducted the first large-scale American study. The
survey, covering 650,000 students in 4,000 U.S. schools, included a handful of
questions about television viewing patterns. Government officials were surprised
to discover that the more television students watched, the lower their
achievement scores.60 Unfortunately, these results were largely
ignored by the media, and the findings were not widely known and soon forgotten. Almost 15 years passed before research on television and
impaired achievement attracted any serious attention again, but then interest in
television's cognitive effects suddenly burgeoned. Statewide assessment programs
conducted in Rhode Island (1975-76), Connecticut (1978-79), and Pennsylvania
(1978-79) surveyed thousands of children and came up with remarkably similar
results: The more television children watched, the worse they performed in all
academic areas.61 Also in 1979, University of New Orleans investigators
extended research down to five and six year olds. Studying first-grade
classrooms in the New Orleans metropolitan area, they also discovered that
"first graders who watched a lot of television in their preschool years earned
lower grades than those who watched less."62 They further
demonstrated that the number of hours children watched television was the single
best predictor of low grades -- a better predictor than parents' low educational
achievement, insufficient time spent in school, insufficient time spent with
family, and a host of other negative factors.63 One year later, Drs. Larry Gross and Michael Morgan,
professors at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of
Communications, made headlines when they found that television did not just
impair academic achievement, it retarded intelligence. They discovered that the
more television tenth graders watched, the lower they scored on IQ tests. The
inverse relationship between IQ and television watching held even after the
researchers controlled for socio-economic status, sex, and family size.64
The drop in IQ scores was large and consistent, and it could not be attributed
to television attracting an abundance of children from lower socio-economic
groups or crowded families. "It is extremely unlikely that the association
between viewing and [low] IQ scores is spurious," they concluded.65 Although data trickled in throughout the late 1970s, the
dam finally burst in 1980 when the California State Board of Education became
interested in the television question and decided to launch a thorough
investigation. That spring it distributed a comprehensive questionnaire to more
than half a million sixth and twelfth graders, evaluating writing, reading, and
arithmetic skills, work habits, family profiles, and television viewing
patterns. The astonishing results caught the attention not only of research
psychologists, but also (for the first time since television research began) the
popular press. The New York Times reported: A California survey indicates that the more a student
watches television, the worse he does in school. Wilson Riles, California
schools superintendent, said Thursday that no matter how much homework the
students did, how intelligent they were, or how much money their parents earned,
the relationship between television and test scores was practically identical.
Based on the survey, Mr. Riles concluded that, for educational purposes,
television "is not an asset and it ought to be turned off."66 The survey was repeated the following year, and
statisticians and psychologists performed even more detailed analyses of the
data. Their reports shocked parents and educators alike. Students from
households with no television set in the living room earned an average reading
score of 74% correct, versus 69% correct for students who had TV sets in the
living room.67 Children from upper socio-economic strata were even
more negatively affected than those from the middle class or lower class.68
Even one hour of television viewing a day reduced achievement scores, and every
additional hour of viewing made things worse.69 It made no difference
whether parents discussed the programs afterward with their children,70
whether children chose their own programs or parents chose for them,71
or what sort of programming children watched.72 Across the board,
even small amounts of television viewing hurt academic achievement. Five Paths to Cognitive Damage In the wake of the California surveys, researchers began
to ask why exposure to the stimulating and potentially enlightening content of
television should retard achievement and IQ. Even more confusing, studies
revealed that television reduced educational aspirations. These studies
demonstrated that, even though TV programs portrayed an overabundance of
doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, the more television children watched,
the less time they wanted to spend in school. The effect was especially
pronounced among adolescents who, as they watched television, lowered not only
their educational aspirations but also their professional hopes. The more TV a
child watched, the lower status the job he eventually wanted to pursue.73
Something about the medium seemed to undermine whatever positive content
television offered. Five explanations emerged. First, Harvard investigators confirmed that television
ate up time children would otherwise have used to study or read for pleasure.
They found, for instance, that children from homes with no television were 11%
more likely to do homework on weekdays and 23% more likely to do homework on
Sundays.74 Professor George Comstock of Syracuse University, arguably
the leading scholar in the study of television, wrote in 1999, "Learning to read
is often hard work for a child, whereas television viewing is comparatively
undemanding. Children are certainly tempted to watch television instead of
mastering reading, and those who succumb will be permanently impaired
scholastically."75 In a spontaneous experiment in 1982, a New Jersey
elementary school announced a "No TV Week." According to the New York Times
report of the event, "Students in every class started spending more time reading
books and talking to their friends and families."76 Two years later
the entire city of Farmington, Connecticut voluntarily gave up TV for one month.
When Wall Street Journal reporters interviewed Farmington residents, both adults
and children most often mentioned reading as the activity they used to fill the
newly available hours.77 Children who do not practice reading find
themselves "impaired scholastically," they do not enjoy school, and, recognizing
how much preparatory schooling the elite professions demand, they scale down
their aspirations. A second way that the medium itself depresses achievement
and IQ (and perhaps thus aspiration) is by making children sleepy. Not only do
children stay up past their bedtimes watching television, a team at Brown
University found that children's sleep onset time was prolonged when they
watched television anytime during the previous day or evening, producing
shortened sleep duration and daytime sleepiness. The researchers suggested that
at bedtime children conjure forth "excessively violent and/or stimulating"
television scenes viewed in the last 24 to 48 hours. Thus, even children who
went to bed on time were less alert if they had watched television the previous
day.78 Marie Winn, a Wall Street Journal columnist, discovered
another way television makes young children overtired. She writes: Third, television's quick cuts alleviate the need to
concentrate. George Comstock explains, "The pacing of much television suppresses
impulse control and the ability to attend to the slower pace of schooling."80
New York University's Neil Postman reports that the average length of a shot on
network television is only 3.5 seconds, "so that the eye never rests, always has
something new to see."81 Robert MacNeil, executive editor and
co-anchor of the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, writes that the idea "is to keep
everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide
constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action, and movement. You are
required to pay attention to no concept, no character, and no problem for more
than a few seconds at a time."82 In the famous 1854 debate between Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen A. Douglas, Douglas led off with a three-hour opening statement, which
Lincoln took four hours to rebut. During the televised presidential debates of
1987, each candidate took five minutes to address questions like "What is your
policy in Central America?" before his opponent launched into a sixty-second
rebuttal.83 This sort of parody is as intellectually taxing a
presentation as anyone will see on television. Since our children sit passively while the television
dances, their ability to become deeply involved with books, school teachers, and
other less frenetic sources of wisdom -- their ability to think -- atrophies. It
should be no wonder that they abandon books, manifest lower intelligence
quotients, fail to achieve academically, and have depressed professional
aspirations. Fourth, television impedes imagination. A study of gifted
fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, included in the Surgeon General's report,
shows that watching a range of television shows - from cartoons to "educational
television" -- depresses the students' subsequent creativity scores.84
Commenting on experiments in which children went on television "diets,"
researchers at the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry write: Experience has shown that children who cease watching
television do play in ways clearly suggesting the use of an imaginary world.
Resuming their viewing, the children decrease this kind of play. Research
findings also suggest that children who are light television viewers report
significantly more imaginary playmates than those who are heavy viewers. Harvard professors Dorothy Singer and Jerome Singer
discovered at least one mechanism by which television corrodes creativity:
Viewers never need to conjure up an image. "Children accustomed to heavy
television viewing process both the auditory and the visual cues afforded by
that medium simultaneously," they write, "and may become lax in generating their
own images" when reading or listening to a story.85 A fifth explanation emerged from the work of Harvard
University Professor T. Berry Brazelton. Brazelton hooked newborn babies up to
electroencephalographs and then exposed them to a flickering light source
similar to a television but with no images. Fifteen minutes into their exposure,
the babies stopped crying and produced sleep patterns on the EEG, even though
their eyes were still open and observing the light.86 Brazelton's
experiment revealed that the medium itself, with no content, acts directly on
the brain to suppress mental activity. The Group for the Advancement of
Psychiatry confirmed Brazelton's finding in 1982. They reported that the brain
waves generated while watching even the most exciting shows were those of low
attention states. The researchers found that while subjects viewed television,
"output of alpha rhythms increased, indicating they were in a passive state, as
if they were just sitting in the dark."87 Every activity a child engages in during his busy day
refines some set of skills. Reading is practice; writing is practice; sports is
practice; engaging in fantasy games is practice; and interacting with people is
practice. All these activities in some way help prepare a child for the
challenges of adult life. Television is also practice, but not for any activity.
Television is practice for inactivity. When children watch television they are
practicing sleeping - often for hours every day. One does not need a Ph.D. to
realize that this could have all sorts of deleterious effects on cognitive
development and later aspirations. Social Interaction Parents sometimes justify television's presence in their
household by arguing that it creates a venue for "family time" -- that is,
everyone comes together to watch television "as a family." Eleanor Maccoby,
professor emerita of psychology at Stanford University and a member of the
National Academy of Sciences, investigated this theory and concluded: It appears that the increased family contact brought
about by television is not social except in the most limited sense: that of
being in the same room with other people...the viewing atmosphere in most
households is one of quiet absorption in the programs on the part of the family
members who are present. The nature of the family social life during a program
could be described as "parallel" rather than interactive, and the set does seem
quite clearly to dominate family life when it is on.88 A mother of one child who participated in the New Jersey
"No TV Week" effused, "My daughter and I rediscovered each other." Another
mother responded with shock, "My three children actually played together." A
group of elementary students who had participated confessed, "Play is more fun
than TV," and said they would never watch as much television as they had before
the experiment.89 According to a United States government report, these
anecdotes are not atypical: "Extended and frequent television viewing has been
shown to decrease the time and opportunity available for social interaction
within the family."90 Not surprisingly, the social skills of children atrophy
when they watch television instead of playing. An experiment carried out by
researchers at the University of New Orleans measured the social skills of 128
first graders and then interviewed to determine the amount of time the child
spent watching television every day. After controlling for a range of other
variables (including sleep, time spent with peers and family, parents'
educational levels, etc.), the number one determinant of social skills was how
little television the child watched. Those who watched the least television had
the best social skills.91 Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim suggests that television
retards social skills not just by depriving children of playtime, but also by
accustoming them to unrealistically stimulating characters: Children who have been taught, or conditioned, to listen
passively most of the day to the warm verbal communications coming from the TV
screen, to the deep emotional appeal of the so-called TV personality, are often
unable to respond to real persons because they arouse so much less feeling than
the skilled actor.92 Indeed, it is not just television personalities that
often outshine real people. Anything portrayed on television can be made more
exciting than almost anything in real life. A 1999 commercial for a popular
minivan shows a happy family on vacation, riding through stunning mountains and
plains.93 The parents are quietly absorbing the scenery. The children
in the back seat are also quiet, but for a different reason. The camera zooms in
to reveal the children mesmerized by individual television monitors mounted in
front of them. A similar commercial appeared in 1992.94 The
ad shows a name-brand television set sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon. On
its screen appears the same panorama that forms the actual backdrop. A boy is
drawn to the set, oblivious to the surrounding natural grandeur. He turns back
to his parents, points to the screen, and yells, "Hey, look, it's the Grand
Canyon!" When a child has television, of what interest is Niagara Falls, the
Grand Canyon, or anything else that's real? Obesity Television makes children fat.95 Harvard University researchers
discovered that the odds of a child becoming obese rise 12 to 20% for each daily
hour of television he watches.96 Epidemiologists also agree that
watching two or more hours of television daily is a global marker for high risk
of pediatric hypercholesterolemia.97 Physicians have identified four
ways that television puts children at risk for obesity: First, television displaces more active play.98
Especially today, leisure time is limited. Every daytime hour spent in front of
a television set is therefore one less hour the child has to ride a bike, play
ball, join in team sports, or engage in other activities that would burn
calories or raise the child's average metabolic rate. Investigators also report
that television makes children less active when they do play, although no one is
yet confident exactly why this happens.99 Second, children love to snack while watching television.
Even if these snacks were healthy, this snacking is calorie consumption that
simply would not happen were the children out playing.100 Third, the snacks children consume while watching
television are overwhelmingly high in fat, cholesterol, salt, and sugar, and low
in vitamins, minerals, and fiber.101 The U.S. Surgeon General
attributes these unhealthful snacking habits to the success of television
advertising. He writes that the average American child sees 2,500 commercials a
year for "high-calorie, high-sugar, low nutrition products." He also reveals
that 70% of food advertisements are for foods high in fat, cholesterol, sugar,
and salt, while only 3% are for fruits and vegetables.102 Consistent with the Surgeon General's theory,
epidemiologists at the University of Minnesota surveying children's Saturday
morning television recently discovered that 56.5% of all commercials on ABC,
CBS, NBC, Fox, and Nickelodeon advertised food products, and the most frequently
advertised product was high-sugar cereal. Comparing the food products advertised
on TV with the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations for pediatric
diet, the researchers found that "the diet depicted in Saturday morning
television programming is the antithesis of what is recommended for healthful
eating for children."103 They further observed that children see a
food commercial about every five minutes on Saturday morning TV, and that the
main explicit messages used to sell food products are taste and the promise of a
free toy. The University of Minnesota team levelled the obvious charge, "The
heavy marketing of high-fat foods and foods of low nutritional value targeted to
such a vulnerable group can be viewed as exploitation."104 The fourth and perhaps most insidious link between
television and obesity was discovered in 1993. Psychologists and epidemiologists
at the University of Tennessee and Memphis State University monitored metabolic
rates in eight- to twelve-year-old children under two conditions: lying down in
a dark room, and sitting up watching television. In every case, the child's
metabolic rate while sitting and watching television was far lower than his
metabolic rate while lying down in the dark. Watching television is worse than
doing nothing. Equally surprising, the effect of the TV session on
metabolic rate persisted after the session for at least the length of time the
child had watched television. That is, a 25-minute TV session depressed
metabolic rate not only during television viewing but also for at least 25
minutes after viewing had ended.105 The Tennessee study has two astounding implications:
First, since TV slows metabolism, the same child, eating the same types and
quantities of food and participating in the same amount of activity, could
remain healthy or become obese depending on how long he is exposed to television
each day. Second, since metabolism remains depressed even after the
TV session ends, a child who watches television gains more weight from food
eaten even when he is not watching television, and will have more difficulty
burning off excess fat, than children who do not watch TV. The researchers
conclude: Those children who watch an excessive amount of
television are more at risk for becoming obese because their resting energy
expenditures are lower than if they were doing nothing at all. This finding
emphasizes the potential importance of controlling the amount of television
watched by children at risk for obesity.106 Children's Television and "Kosher"
Videos Many parents who admit that prime-time programming contains inappropriate
content instead encourage their children to watch special children's programming
(like Sesame Street, cartoons, and "kosher" videos). Here, the theory is, the
content is better. Regardless of whether the content really is better (a hotly
debated topic among experts in the study of television), the medium that carries
children's television is just as problematic. Attention Deficit Disorder The late Dr. Dorothy Cohen, a professor at the Bank
Street College of Education, was among the first secular scholars to discover
the damage done by children's television programs. Back in 1973, she reported
that although Sesame Street does teach letter recognition, it also is
responsible for "a decrease in imaginative play and an increase in aimless
running around, non-involvement in play materials, low frustration tolerance,
poor persistence, and confusion about reality and fantasy."107 By
capturing the daily attention of 80% of America's two to five year olds, she
argued, Sesame Street was "fostering an increase in frenetic behavior and the
impoverishment of play."108 Sesame Street, Cohen said, was creating a
"literate but unteachable" generation.109 Shortly after Cohen's first attack on Sesame Street, Dr.
Werner Halpern, director of the Children and Youth Division of the Rochester
Mental Health Center, revealed the results of his own research: The program's pulsating, insistent visual and auditory
stimulation can act as an assault on the nervous system of young children with
immature neurological and perceptual development. [In some two year olds]
sensory overkill produced by the show's overheated teaching techniques triggered
pressured speech, constant movement, frantic reactions and a compulsion to
recite and identify numbers and letters.110 Then came the report from the Yale University Family
Television Research and Consultation Center: "Sesame Street creates a
psychological orientation in children that leads to a shortened attention span,
a lack of reflectiveness, and an expectation of rapid change in the broader
environment."111 The Yale researchers warned that "well intentioned
parents who allow their children to watch nothing but Sesame Street...might
actually be encouraging over-stimulation and frenetic behavior."112 In 1979, Israeli researchers registered complaints with
the creators of Sesame Street, describing how children in their country who
watched the show regularly showed less perseverance on a routine task than a
control group of nonviewers.113 Although Sesame Street executives
shrugged off the Israeli results as insignificant, the U.S. Surgeon General felt
differently and included them in his 1982 report.114 Sesame Street spokesmen defended the show, saying that it
really helped children focus. They provided supporting studies documenting how
well children attended to the television while watching Sesame Street. Teachers
on the front line were not impressed. A New York Times article detailed how
"teachers report they cannot hold the attention of a kindergarten class for more
than two or three minutes - the average length of a Sesame Street segment. And
they say the show is to blame."115 Referring to the visual effects
common not only on Sesame Street, but also on other "educational" children's
programs like Electric Company and Zoom, a Connecticut teacher testified before
the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, "Kids today are accustomed to
learning through gimmicks, but I cannot turn my body into shapes or
flashlights."116 The educational psychologist Jane Healy wrote in
American Educator, "It amazes me that so many people seem to have accepted the
notion that this peripatetic carnival will somehow teach kids to read -- despite
the fact that the habits of mind necessary for reading are exactly those that
Sesame Street does not teach."117 New York University's Professor
Neil Postman summarized the educators' objection: "We now know that Sesame
Street encourages children to love school only if school is like Sesame Street"
-- which it is not.118 Violent Toddlers In 1982, investigators at the University of Kansas
reported finding that the very excitement that keeps children glued to
children's TV shows and videos also creates "a state of generalized arousal"
leading to aggression.119 Although the fast pace of shows like Sesame
Street hold the children's attention, it also frustrates them, the researchers
explained. Yale University's Professor Dorothy Singer made headlines in 1995
with parallel findings. "Even innocuous programs like the quick-cutting Sesame
Street or variety and game shows were so stimulating that they prompted
aggression," she told Newsweek.120 Other Effects While quick cuts and over-stimulating programming present
certain unique threats, children's television and videos also carry all the
medium-related dangers of adult shows. The 1982 California Assessment Program
discovered, for example, that children who watched educational (public)
television once a day earned achievement scores identical to children who
watched commercial TV, and both groups scored 10% lower than children who did
not watch TV at all.121 Moreover, like their commercial counterparts,
educational TV and videos devour not only the time a child would otherwise be
reading, writing, or practicing arithmetic; they also consume playtime, which
means less opportunity for learning how to interact with others and less
physical exercise. And like any TV show, educational programs increase daytime
sleepiness and impede the development of independent imagination. Why We Let Them Watch Why, then, would any parent sit their child down in front
of a television for an hour or two? There seem to be two primary reasons. First, some parents are themselves TV addicts. According
to the New York Times report, during the New Jersey "No TV Week": Parents want to spend time with their children...and with
the television, and the easiest compromise is to watch television with the
children. This is not to imply that parents interact in any serious or deep way
with their children while the set is on. Generally, they do not. However, it is
time spent together; and since both parties slip into the TV trance,
interpersonal difficulties are usually limited to arguments over what show to
watch. A second reason parents give in to TV is that it is such
an effective babysitter. Raising good children is tough. Really tough. It
demands creativity, endurance, and especially patience. It demands time and
commitment, and more time. For any normal person, the challenge can be daunting.
TV provides what seems to be an easy way out. Jack Gould, the New York Times'
first television critic, thus observed, "Children's hours on television
admittedly are an insidious narcotic for the parent. With the tots fanned out on
the floor in front of the receiver, a strange if wonderful quiet seems at hand."123
With the click of a switch, our parenting responsibilities seem to drop to
making meals, doing laundry, and handling bedtime. Of course, this is an illusion. The child's cognitive and
emotional needs remain, but in a TV trance he becomes incapable of expressing
them. The Wall Street Journal columnist Marie Winn laments: Perhaps because encouraging children to watch television
was so easy and pleasant when compared to the more disagreeable or difficult
strategies of the past, parents overlooked the fact that those very behaviors
that cause them trouble, those explorations, manipulations, and endless
experiments in cause and effect, are profitable and indeed necessary activities
for a small child, and that dealing with children's difficult behaviors by
eliminating them entirely via the television set is not dissimilar to
suppressing a child's natural behavior by threats of physical punishment, and
surprisingly similar to drugging a child into inactivity.124 The Time and Newsweek columnist Peggy Noonan confesses
that both of these reasons -- her own addiction to TV and its magical ability to
mesmerize her children -- undermined her resolve to protect her children from
television: I have tried to turn off the TV in my house, I really
have. Once, I shut it off for a week, and I was never, ever allowed to talk on
the phone because I was never, ever alone. On the third origami paper house, I
began to sob. Once, we shut it off for the night, but then I read it was the The
Simpsons episode where Lisa is sent to the Ayn Rand Preschool, so I had to make
an exception for that. Once, we had it seriously limited for awhile, but then
Kosovo came along and Mom started hitting the network news and then CNN and then
mainlining MSNBC... Well, as you can see, Mom is part of the problem.125 Kicking the Habit We cannot be blamed for falling into the television and
video trap. Not everyone is attuned to proclamations from traditional Jewish
scholars; the secular, scientific data did not pile up until very recently; and
the facts still have not garnered much attention in the mass media. Most parents
have no concept of how bad television really is. But now we know. Perhaps more than any other influence,
television is the antithesis of the traditional Jewish educational ideal. It
often plants cruel or self-destructive values and perspectives and builds
harmful behavioral routines. We see the damage done to children all around us -
the cognitive, emotional, and physical signs of too much TV. And yet we wonder
whether we and our children can survive and thrive without our daily dose of
television. Perhaps the time has arrived to find out. An Addiction Test The first step towards mitigating television's negative
influence on the family is determining which if any family members are TV
addicts. Addicts of all sorts often deny that they are addicted. Many alcoholics
claim that they could quit at any time but say that they "choose" to partake
because they enjoy the experience. Many drug addicts say the same thing. So do
those addicted to food. Often, addicts only realize that they are out of control
when they are challenged to control their addiction for a month or so and
realize they cannot do it. Every family deserves a 30-day vacation from television
-- with all the play, reading, and family time this promises. If this can be
accomplished while the TV set is physically accessible, it is a sign that family
members are probably not addicted and can be casually weaned off of television's
corrosive commercials and programming. As a group, the family can voluntarily
limit television watching to weekends - a move that might cut TV consumption by
half or more. Making plans to spend time together as a family on weekends could
further reduce consumption without introducing any further restrictions. As
family members discover each other and taste more wholesome activities, interest
in television might wane altogether. A Family Detox Plan If family members (including ourselves) discover that it
is impossible to keep the TV set off for thirty days, we must be honest enough
to admit that we are facing an addiction - an addiction that negatively impacts
intellectual, emotional, and physical well-being. When this is the case, we need
to employ the same strategies used by addictions experts. First, parents must slowly introduce alternative
activities to take over television hours. These alternatives -- "TV methadone"
-- simultaneously reduce withdrawal symptoms and begin the weaning process. On
Thursday nights the family could participate in some fun sort of charitable work
in the community. Most traditional Jewish communities have volunteer groups that
deliver crates of free food to the poor on Thursday nights in anticipation of
the Sabbath, and family members of all ages enjoy the hustle and good spirit of
these activities. After a month or so, parents might want to expand the program,
dedicating Wednesday nights to a library visit. If children are TV addicts, they probably will not
immediately appreciate the pleasures of reading, and a parent will need to help
them discover magazines and books dealing with the themes they find most
exciting. After another month, Tuesday nights could be set aside for helping
with homework and test preparation. Everyone could sit together for an hour or
two, doing their own homework and assisting others with theirs. Parents will
immediately appreciate that this is a perfect opportunity to get a clear picture
of their children's academic strengths and weaknesses, and even children begin
to appreciate a homework night as soon as they see that it improves their
grades. Further down the line, Monday nights could become arts-and-crafts night,
or music night, or even Monopoly night. If Mom and Dad participate too, and the
activity is well organized, everyone could have a lot of fun. These are only sample recommendations, and creative
parents will have little difficulty thinking of many activities that would be
more enjoyable and worthwhile than vegetating in front of the television. (The
TV Turnoff Network website at
www.tvturnoff.org gives a range of alternatives to TV watching.) With
commitment, parents can thus ease an addicted family off of television in about
half a year. Addicts of any sort should not be forced to choose
between their addiction and its healthy replacement, and TV addicts are no
different. The choice is painfully difficult and often inspires rebellion. Just
as no heroin is available when addictions experts offer their subjects
methadone, so too the television should magically disappear (or be disabled) in
anticipation of a special family activity and magically reappear (or be
re-enabled) when no replacement activities are scheduled. The TV should be moved
(or disabled) when the children are not present so as to avoid creating an
opportunity for conflict. Nothing need be said about the TV's absence unless the
children notice and ask, and then a brief statement is best: "We don't need it
right now, so I put it away." If despite these precautions, our children become very
emotional when denied access to television, we must sit with them, tell them how
much we love them, show affection, and calmly explain why we think it is worth
trying a new activity. If, during the early stages of the weaning process, the
child is very panicked about missing a particular television program, we can
offer to videotape it for him so that he may view it sometime when the family
has not scheduled a replacement activity. We should not display anger or
frustration as we help family members progress in the detox program. Addictions
experts succeed through firm patience and love. Of course, television is not the only threat to our
children's development. It is but one especially noxious example of the sort of
danger we are now capable of identifying and avoiding. We might also detect
problematic aspects of Walkmans, Gameboys, and computer games. Even media like
the internet take on a different appearance when viewed from this perspective.
Each of these educational challenges demands our attention. Now, our job is to muster the willpower -- and the love
-- to take a courageous stand for our own sake and for the sake of our children.
©
Lawrence Kelemen
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