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Everyone is rushing around, blinded by their own agenda bubble*, trying to make it from one task to another so that there is enough time to fit in a few more errands before the day comes to a close. Kids watch television programs with so many different images flashing across the screen in a minute that it would even make – sick. Speed is so highly regarded as a way of life in this society, that those who fail to embrace it are soon out of the loop. Left behind from a whirlwind of techno-gadgets, glamour magazines, and marketing schemes that are now a part of every day life. Television has become a large part of the American child’s life. On average a child (five to eight year olds') in this country watches three to four hours of television each day. That is 1,278 hours of mind destroying goodness a year. At graduation the total would be 15,000 hours of TV as compared to 11,000 hours of school. The percentage of obese children has jumped in the past ten years, and can be directly linked to the amount of television that kids are watching. Worse yet are the psychological effects that TV has on children, especially between the ages of 6 to 10. In this stage of development the brain is like silly putty and can be molded to any shape. When a human is born, its brain has over 10 billion neurons, which can be formed into pathways inside the brain. In comparing the forming brain of a human to a sponge, the most “porus” time is between six and ten years of age. This is when the neurons are making interconnections to each other (dendrites) and can reach long tendrils (axons) far into other parts of the brain. So every thing that a child does in this stage is directly related to how many dendrites and axon form. The more a child does something (talks, for instance), the more mylinated, or cemented, the pathways in the brain get. When a pathway is mylinated, the easier it is to access that part of the brain and further expand the connections into that part. A six year old has seven times as many connections formed in their brain as compared to an adult. This is taking into consideration that a six year olds’ brain is only two thirds’ the size of an adults. When a human reaches the age of 10 or so, an enzyme is released into the brain, which dissolves any dendrite connections that are not mylinated very well. It seems that almost eighty percent of all connections that are formed prior are lost at this stage in development. So the term “use it or lose is” could be extremely appropriate in this case. A child who has been brought up watching TV all of the time while neurons are trying to make connections is going to have some serious problems. When the brain is taking in everything that it can get is senses on and all that a child is doing is watching television, there is going to be some serious damage. The telie is only working two senses, visual and auditory, and both not develop right because of a televisions’ physical setup. A speaker on the television has an extremely limited range that it can duplicate. So, when a child is growing up and the brain is expecting to be experiencing the sounds of the real world and all that it is getting is a 50hz (fidelity of a clock radio) range of sound coming from a box in the living room, full development of that part of the brain will not occur. Also, background music and sound effects in shows trick the mind and will have it expecting those types of things in regular situations, making socializing somewhat difficult without the things that kids are used to. Constantly updating is what a television screen does. A cathode ray shoots across a phosphorus painted piece of glass one thousand times a second; so fast that our eyes pick it up not as a bunch of lines tracing across a screen, but as a whole image. It is possible to see this happing when a video camera is pointed at a TV screen, since the video camera updates at a faster rate then our eye to our brain does. Although we can’t see it flickering, it is like the candle in the middle of a dark room that no one can take their eyes off of. This brings up the point that when a child who has been raised on TV reaches the age of ten or so has the dendrite melting enzyme released into the brain, all that they have experienced is low-fi sound and a flickering visual. This may pose a problem later down the line. A.D.D. A.D.H.D. These are both common terms that are thrown around constantly now. Every child seems to have it. Every child needs Ritalin or something to make this seemingly rampant disorder calm itself. A key suspect in the A.D.D. generation game could lie in the changes that entertainment has gone through in the past few years. Pong has turned into a mile-a-minute shoot ‘em up game. Scooby Doo has turned into a blazingly fast cops and robbers cartoon. Everything is extremely fast paced. When the mind is exposed to fast paced lifestyles (i.e. Modern American) or stimuli, compensation occurs. This compensation, called the saturation effect, makes the brain require that amount of stimulus constantly or boredom and lack of concentration could result. A comparative study was done on two Hanna Barbara cartoons: Scooby Doo (1969) and The Power Puff Girls (1998). The goal was to find out how much, if any, cartoons have sped up. Just testing three clips of each, the results were amazing. Every time, the Power Puff Girls had almost double the amount of cuts per action scene. When comparing the two right next to each other, the difference is extremely noticeable. So with this holding true, it may be a fair (or close to fair) assumption to make that kids are bored without constant stimulation due to the kinds of thing that they are being stimulated by. Now don’t get me wrong, I do not think that television is an evil thing. Educational programming and mindless sitcoms are my entertainment on occasion. But for me, there could have been much more of a future for TV then parents complaining about the sex and violence on the airwaves but also being the people who support that programming by watching it. News could be more fulfilling than (again) sex and violence, and actually have content on world issues and such. ‘Tis a shame, but that is what it is, and there is no stopping it. The only advice I have is watch with disscression and always keep the mind open. Bibliography: Hampel, Robert L. A generation in Crisis? Daedalus, Fall 1998 Vol. 127 iss. 4, p 67 Tofffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Random House, 1970 Goldman, Debra . Nurture Assumption. AdWeek-Eastern Edition, 8.24.98, Vol. 39, iss. 34, p 50 DeGrandpre, Richard Ph.d. Ritalin Nation: Rapid Fire Culture and the Transformation of the Human Conscience. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999 Deneberg, Dennis. Move Over Barney. American Educator, Fall 1997, Vol. 21, iss. 3, p 18-19 Word Count: 1216
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