Thursday 13 September 2007

Pic of the day: How can you stand reading books that are all text? (Especially after watching TV all your childhood.)

Told you TV was evil!

Childhood TV viewing linked to teen attention problems! This article in New Scientist states the obvious, but of course it was not obvious to those who fervently wanted to not believe it. They probably still don't believe it and never will.

Television does not necessarily need to have this effect, but it follows from a trick the medium has used for a long time now. By quickly changing viewpoints, but still being recognizable, it triggers an Orientation Reaction in the brain. The brain is hardwired to react to sudden changes in the environment: Those of our ancestors who failed this, came to a sticky end millions of years ago. Even flies react to sudden movements, as you may have noticed if you tried to swat them. Fish have more nuanced reactions: If it is something small that moves, it may be edible. If it is something large, it may want to eat them. We are even more nuanced, but a powerful reflex is still triggered by the rapid scene changes. When it happens at the right frequency, it can keep our attention at the screen even though we are not particularly interested in what happens there.

To think that you could expose toddlers to this for a significant part of their week and not see any effects later in life is pure faith. Cult-level faith, if I may say so. You may have heard of cults where the members carry snakes in their hands or drink poison, and due to their faith they suffer no ill effects. But the moment they are found giving their small children poison or draping snakes around them, you can bet they go off to jail with all due haste. Hopefully in the near future, the same fate will befall those who plop their toddlers and preschoolers in front of the TV.

The study does not, admittedly, prove that TV leads to attention deficit. It could be that children with attention deficit are drawn to the TV. (In fact, it is highly likely that they are.) But you'd think that at least at an early age, the attitude of the parents would come heavily into play. If your parents don't want you to watch TV, you may still do so, but not for hours a day. Conversely, if watching TV is the culture of your family, you are probably going to be sitting there whether you want to or not, for the first part of your life. In addition, we have a clear pathway through which TV slavery would be likely to cause lasting changes to the brain.

A good follow-up would be to pick groups that for some reason don't have TV in the home and see how their teens turned out. If the children were born to be distracted anyway, there should be little or no difference between this group and the group that had access to TV. I predict that there will indeed be a big difference. But the study has to be done quickly, while there are still a few thousand left who have not bowed down before the "American idol".