The Deity in the Corner
of the Living Room
Friend or Foe? Archie Burnet reviews our relationship
with the omnipresent television.
Much has been said in the ongoing debate about the effects of television on human behaviour. Its power is obvious, influencing whole cultures and shaping people’s values, perceptions and needs almost overnight. India is a classic example of television as the primary weapon of a cultural invasion, and the consequent transformation of people’s desires and lifestyles. For the past ten years Star Television has broadcast largely American produced programmes to nearly one billion people, most of whom still live in poverty. The baseball cap can now be seen on the heads of thousands of young Indians nationwide.
Contradictions abound as to the effect of the deity in the corner of the world’s living rooms. On the one hand those with a vested interest in the entertainment industry will hotly deny that violence on TV affects human behaviour. While just across the road, there is a global industry called advertising that demonstrates every day how to influence the behaviour of millions with only 30 seconds worth of seductive sounds and images.
Is TV good or bad? Are we fooling ourselves when we think that almost constant mental emotional and physical violence can be consumed in the name of entertainment and not have a profound effect on the personalities of young and old alike? Are we, as Neil Postman pointed out with exquisite clarity, simply “Amusing ourselves to Death” in his book of the same title? Is television simply the most potent, addictive and legitimate drug in the world? Are we all too hooked to see the light?
The evidence has been gradually mounting that television certainly plays a major role in shaping the personality and potential of every new generation. Concerned for the well-being of their children, a TV Action Group was formed over 20 years ago in the UK by a group of concerned parents. After making their own observations and conducting their own research they were quite convinced about the effects of the ‘magic box’. While their research is not ‘scientific’ in the traditional sense, their findings make essential reading for every parent. Read it through your intuition as opposed to your rational process - does this feel right? But remember, if you are hooked yourself, then you might feel a resistance to some of these observations.
‘IT’S NOT WHAT YOU WATCH...’
Television watching itself affects child development regardless of the programme content. It affects children’s thinking, speaking, imagination, senses, physique, feelings and behaviour.
TELEVISION WATCHING AS AN EXPERIENCE
Television watching puts children into a passive, trance-like state where they become ‘TV Prisoners’ - a condition quite different from their active, playful state when not watching. Some parents observed that:
“My five year-old goes into trance when he watches TV. He just gets locked into what is happening on the screen. He’s totally, absolutely, absorbed when he watches and oblivious to anything else.” “He watches in a real trance.”
“My children are cross and irritable after they have been watching; often nervous, bored, disagreeable, slowly coming back to normal.”
TV ADDICTION - ‘THE PLUG-IN DRUG’
Not unlike drugs and alcohol, TV watching allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state, where worries and anxieties cannot intrude. The typically vacant stare of someone on drugs or alcohol is very similar to the stare of the TV watcher.
The eyes need to be completely passive in order to watch TV; i.e. a fixed focus, no voluntary eye movements and a fixed head position. It is as if instead of the imagery arising from within, as with day-dreaming, it is produced mechanically for the watcher by the television.
HOW LONG DO CHILDREN WATCH TELEVISION?
Two in three school age children watch TV 3-5 hours daily or 21-35 hours weekly, according to the recent PYE survey. This is as long as children are in school. One in three children dream about late night programmes. In the US, surveys show an average of 30 hours per week, and up to 54 hours a week for pre-school children. In West Germany, 80% of children state that TV is their favourite hobby.
CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT NEEDS
Children learn so much in their first three years compared to the rest of their lives. They learn to walk, to speak and experience the awakening of thinking as they grow from being babies to infants. Through play, children develop their knowledge of things, their relationships with other children, their physical control and their imagination. Playing is a child’s work, and channels energy constructively into the learning processes. It is essentially active.
Children learn through imitating other children and the adults who tell stories, nursery rhymes, and who can provide everyday activities such as baking or making pictures.
TV RETARDS BRAIN DEVELOPMENT AND BLUNTS THE SENSES
The brain is patterned by the senses, by movement, speech, thought and imagination. As the brain develops, children shift from a non-verbal ‘right hemisphere’ dreaming consciousness to a verbal, logical ‘left hemisphere’ state. Television watching prolongs children’s dependency on the right hemisphere.
The ‘brain strain’ on children of forming 625 lines composed of over 800 dots appearing 25 times per second into meaningful images must be considerable. With the lack of eye-movement, this strain can produce sleeplessness, anxiety, nightmares, headaches, perceptual disorders, poor concentration and blunted senses. TV watching can produce sensory deprivation.
TELEVISION AND SPEAKING
Children learn to speak by talking with real people, not by listening to mechanically reproduced speech. Real people communicate the meaning of words, whereas television only reproduces the sounds, a subtle but vital difference, confusing for toddlers. Television, by emphasising the visual, reduces the need of children to learn how to speak; no verbal response is required of the child; thus speech is discouraged.
Members of a working party on reading agreed that children know nursery rhymes much less well than previously, largely because of television, which was a ‘look and forget’ rather than a ‘look and learn’ medium.
TELEVISION ENCOURAGES LAZY READERS
Reading involves concentration, accurate perception, imagination, the comprehension of a story line, and the freedom of the reader to vary the pace. Television, by causing the ‘vacant stare’ undermines concentration; by an overwhelming visual impact stultifies the imagination; by blunting the senses, interferes with the mechanics of reading; and by emphasising the non-verbal reduces children’s enthusiasm for words.
TELEVISION DEPRIVES CHILDREN OF PLAY
Before television, there was a children’s culture rich in games, songs and rhymes. Children could play longer, sustain interest more, play dramatically and were more active - according to experienced nursery teachers. Television watching puts children into an untypically passive state in which they are deprived of their true work which is their play.
A REDUCED SENSE OF IDENTITY
Children develop their sense of identity, of saying ‘I’ to themselves in meeting real people. The people on TV are unreal, impersonal images which do little or nothing to awaken a child’s sense of self. Hence ‘TV children’ may tend to relate to themselves and others as things, objects, tools, or even machines. This attitude may later develop into an inability to react constructively in social situations.
ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
The content of violent programmes may affect children’s behaviour, for children learn by imitation. However, the nature of the TV experience regardless of programme content may cause anti-social behaviour. Relating to others more as objects than as human beings, a result of TV watching, can contribute to violence. Also, the television experience gives an illusion of participating in an activity when in fact one is totally passive, so that children who are heavy viewers are less able to judge the feelings, expectations and problems of others in real life social situations.
Apart from the statistic that young people watch on average between 20 and 26 hours of television per week and that children see 8,000 killings and 100,000 other acts of violence before they enter high school at the age 12, there is in America today a disturbing new phenomenon. Doctors are now prescribing anti-depressant drugs to thousands of children nationwide between the ages of 8-12. You don’t have to be a genius to work out where the images and ideas, in both saturating quantity and violent quality, are coming from to weigh heavy and deep in the psyches and subconscious minds.
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