Four Arguments for Elimination of Television

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He suggests that light playing against the skin is itself stimulating. The silliness of that statement can be gathered by merely comparing that low-level stimulation with the sort of stimulation the skin would receive from just about any minor body movement. Reaching for a grape involves more bodywide skin stimulation: clothes against skin, stretching, cool grapes bursting sour in the mouth.

Worse, McLuhan implies that in seeing images on a screen, the human is inclined to act on them, thereby inciting the sense of touch for action. This is a really irresponsible remark.

Images on television are not real. They are not events taking place where the person who views them is sitting. The images are taking place in the television set, which then projects them into the brain of the viewer. Direct response to them would therefore be more than absurd. So whatever stimulation is felt is instantly repressed. While McLuhan may be correct that seeing the images stimulates the impulse to move, the impulse is cut off. The effect is a kind of sensory tease, to put the case generously. The human starts a process and then stops it, then starts it again, then stops it, vibrating back and forth between those two poles of action and repression, all of it without a purpose in real life.

There is mounting evidence that this back-and-forth action is a major cause of hyperactivity; fast movement without purpose, as though stimulated by electricity. The physical energy which is created by the images, but not used, is physically stored. Then when the set is off, it comes bursting outward in aim less, random, speedy activity. I have seen it over and over again with children. They are quiet while watching. Then afterwards they become overactive, irritable and frustrated.

Marie Winn quotes Dr. Matthew Dumont, who says that television causes hyperactive response. But Australian psychologists Merrelyn and Fred Emery, in their study of television, from which I will be quoting at length later on, have gone so far as to absolutely predict that as television advances in Australia there will be a directly proportionate increase in hyperactivity. I believe that in extreme cases the frustration inherent in the TV experience can lead to violent activity, whatever the content of the program. Artificially teased senses require resolution. It is bizarre and frightening, therefore, that many parents use television as a means of calming hyperactive children. It would be far better to calm them with physical exercise, sports, wrestling, hugging, bathing and a lot of direct attention that gives them wideranging sensory and intellectual stimulation. Changes in diet would also help. The worst thing one can do for a hyperactive child is to put him or her in front of a television set. Television activates the child at the same time that it cuts the child (or adult) off from real sensory stimulation and the opportunity for resolutlon.

Television is Sensory Deprivation

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