TV ADDICTION
(Page 2 of 4)
January/February 1986
By Pat Stone
Television watching is the major obstacle to literacy and learning in America today. TV demands a short attention span, reading a long one. TV does your thinking and imagining for you; reading develops both thinking and imagination.
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But is it certain that those 15,000 hours the average child spends watching the tube in the first 17 years of life (5,000 hours by kindergarten!) do have negative effects?
Well, in 1980 the California Department of Education correlated the scholastic achievement test scores of half a million children with the amount of television they watched. The conclusion? The more time a child spent watching TV, the lower the test scoreregardless of IQ, social background, or study habits.
Television watching is a passive, antisocial experience. Time spent zonked out in front of the tube is time spent not playing: the major occupation of childhood. Through play, children develop their imaginations, practice new skills, and learn self-control (all those sandlot baseball arguments serve a vital socializing purpose). In solitary play, a child learns to enjoy free time: to build independence and a storehouse of self-entertaining skills that can help sustain him or her during life's idle (or troubled) hours.
Television watching decreases the quality of family life . .. not so much from the behavior it promotes as from the behavior it prevents. All those hours in front of the tube are hours spent not learning the skills of ordinary family living-working together, ironing out hassles—that help young people grow in character. They are hours without family conversation and lacking all the sharing, bonding, and learning that such interactions can provide. (Being a passive experience, TV watching can't be considered a family activity, even when the whole clan is glued to the same program.)
Television watching offers the parents short-term benefits but long-term problems. It starts out as a baby-sitter, something to keep the little one busy until supper is ready. It expands to take up more and more hours of the child's day, anesthetizing its small viewer, robbing the child of life experiences. By the time the adults sense what is happening, the kids may be so plugged into the TV that they've turned the grown-ups off. The parents, in turn, may have slowly retreated from active child rearing, failing to socialize and discipline their children.
When the children get older, such hens often come home to roost. Television watching is psychologically addictive. Don't believe that? Try turning it off for a week. Witness the anguished cries and tantrums of your children. Feel your hand reaching—of its own volition—for the dial. You may admit that most of what you see on TV is worthless junk, a waste of your time, a passive escape from life—and one that doesn't satisfy or fulfill you—and yet you want to keep watching it.
