These polemics are all similar, argues David Buckingham, in that children are not seen as differentiated as TV viewers. In his book After the Death of Childhood, Buckingham writes: Television, because of its inherently 'visual' nature one wonders what happened to the soundtrack , is effectively seen to bypass cognition entirely.
It requires no intellectual, emotional or imaginative investment, but simply imprints itself on the child's consciousness. Again, no empirical basis is offered for these assertions. Buckingham adds that what makes all these polemics questionable is the one-dimensional analysis of the electronic media as causes of terrible tendencies among children.
Excessive TV viewing could, for instance, be symptomatic of, rather than a cause of, sociopathic behaviour among children. The crucial issue here, arguably, is the notion of "excessive". This is especially true at younger ages, when learning to talk and play with others is so important.
Until more research is done about the effects of TV on very young children, the American Academy of Paediatrics does not recommend television for children age two or younger. Buckingham also has a problem with the very notion of ADHD. What used to be called 'bloody annoying children' has had a label put on it, and this has consequences.
Drug companies are making big money out of making tranquillisers like Ritalin for children and there are whole industries in medical research working to construct this way of defining children's behaviour. Buckingham adds that parents' fears about the possible deleterious consequences of children watching television is exploited by politicians.
An Argument In Favor Of Television and Other Stories
I'm by no means saying that there aren't associations, just that it is too easy to blame one thing for children's problems. We're dealing with really complicated matters here that readily get over-simplified. So is watching TV a bad thing for under-twos?
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The research suggests no more than that it could be, while never really tackling the issue of how much TV viewing among toddlers would be regarded as excessive. Ten hours a day might be too much, but what about one hour of Teletubbies watched, in the traditional manner, with mother? Would that be a bad thing?
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As far as I could discover, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the anti-TV rhetoric and the plausibility of the data upon which it is based. What is also certain is that any such research is going to get a great deal of attention because so many people stand to make a lot of money out of children - programme-makers, soft-toy producers and Ritalin manufacturers among them. Does the program encourage children to ask questions, to use their imaginations, or to be active or creative?
How does this program represent gender and diversity? Young children believe that television reflects the real world.
Is television destroying our children's minds? | Society | The Guardian
To not see people like themselves—in race, ethnicity, or physical ability, for example—may diminish their self-worth, and not seeing people different from themselves may lead to a distorted view of the world as well. How commercialized is this program? What are the common themes and topics in this program? Watch a few episodes of the program to see the common themes and storylines. What characteristics are shown in a positive or negative light?
Which behaviours and activities are rewarded, and which are punished?
Is television destroying our children's minds?
If there were more programs about this or more programs about that, then we'd have "good television". My own feeling is that that is true — that it's very important to improve the program content — but that television has effects, very important effects, aside from the content, and they may be more important. They organize society in a certain way. They give power to a very small number of people to speak into the brains of everyone else in the system night after night after night with images that make people turn out in a certain kind of way. It affects the psychology of people who watch.
It increases the passivity of people who watch. It changes family relationships. It changes understandings of nature. It flattens perception so that information, which you need a fair amount of complexity to understand it as you would get from reading, this information is flattened down to a very reduced form on television.
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And the medium has inherent qualities which cause it to be that way. And the book is really about television considered from a holistic point of view, from a biological point of view — perceptual, environmental, political, social, experiential, as well as the concrete problems of whether a program is silly or not.
But other people deal with that very well. My job was to talk about television from many of these other dimensions which are not usually discussed.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York, New York: