In today's society a parent's influence on a child has drastically decreased concerning the shaping of the child's belief and position on many issues. This decrease can be linked with the ubiquity of the mass media in the world. Instead of the age old saying "like father, like son" today we can be saying "like television, like zombie". Today's children are being shaped by the grotesque and vulgar media that some parents use as a cheap form of babysitting. This developing dependency on television to keep our children entertained is not only keeping them quiet, but separating them from the family, the earth, and reality as a whole.
The people of this world, growing up in the time period we are, have no choice but to be surrounded by a foreign influence. These influences come from television, the internet, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines and other forms of mass media. The prices of each of these specific influences have greatly dropped since the days of their introduction because of their popularity. This drop has made them accessible to the middle and even lower classes of the world. With one or more televisions and a computer with some sort of internet connection in every home, every person is subjugated to the same spreading pandemic. Since almost everyone has some form of receiving mass media information, only the price of certain media packages separates the amount of media one can consume.
This is a problem because it creates a lack of diversity between the lower and middle classes. The upper class is commonly consumed by their money and the slow acting poison which they cleverly disguise as "need" known as "greed". This leaves the lower and middle class watching the same television shows, consuming the same information and all worrying about the same things. These people are voluntarily walking away from themselves and their individuality and becoming part of the mold of society. They all wonder what is going to happen on a hit drama instead of wondering "When (not if, because people aren't that dumb, right?) oil runs out, what will I do to survive?" The fact that adults in this world become so consumed in this media infested world, leaves little hope for our children.
Dr. Thomas Mulholland's studies of the responses signal's of a brain "actively" watching television. The study shows that while watching television the brain begins to decrease in activity and the amount of alpha waves are increased. Alpha waves are created when the brain is not doing work, thus the less activity, the more alpha waves and visa versa. The brain also shifts all of the active work from the upper regions into the lower regions. This shift creates the blurred borderline between reality and television reality for viewers. Because the activity switches to the lower regions of the brain, it removes the use of the neo-cortex which is responsible for distinguishing reality from the fabricated images on television. The elimination of the use of these brain functions causes viewers to react with the emotion equal to if the events were happening in real life, which also causes the body to release the same hormones it would in that particular situation. The brain also switches activity from the left part of the brain to the right, which causes the release of endorphins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and most of its derivatives such as morphine, codeine, and heroin. Any action that creates a sudden release of endorphins can become habit forming, and create an addictive behavior towards the action. Studies have proven television to create the release of endorphins and a zombie like trance in its viewers. This shift of dependency from the left to the right side and upper regions to lower regions causes addicting opium like trance and eventually causes atrophy in these unused regions of the brain. This sounds bad for adults and some of the younger adults, but the children are the ones who will suffer most.
The children are much easier to influence and in the eyes of the media are fresh pieces of clay in which they can mold to their liking. The children will also become much more easily influenced the more television is pushed into their lives. The children that are introduced at an early age to television will never learn to use the upper regions or the left side of their brain in a normal, advanced, or unassisted way. This lack of activity in these parts of the brain will cause the deterioration of the region and will leave a child with no borderline between reality and fiction. If you don’t believe that television is a problem for our children, studies done by the American Family Radio may change your mind. According to American Family Radio, the amount of minutes a child between the age of two and eleven spends watching television per week equals 1,197 minutes or almost 20 hours. Now compare this to the meaningful conversation they may have with their parents per week, which is about 38.5 minutes1, and you will see who really influences our children. Children are also subjugated to more violent acts on television. There are 3 to 5 violent acts per hour in prime time (these numbers were taken before the introduction of
Children are the ones that are most affected by this amount of media in the world due to their amazing imaginations and the ease of which the yare manipulated. These two characteristics actually come hand in hand when talking about the media’s influence on the youth. There are many education shows on television that do help the youth learn the basics such as math, reading and commonly found today, Spanish. But there are other programs that are mindless and do not teach a lesson or any type of useful information. A young child can become consumed in a cartoon or other program very easily, and lose touch with the reality they are a part of. Their minds can become infested with the nonsense some of these “children’s programs” making the children less active and more likely not to start or finish tasks in real life. This is the same with computers. When someone becomes engulfed within the extreme size of the internet or of a PC game, they tend to ignore the reality outside of their little boxed in world. This addiction, as many have recognized it as one, has not only created a distance between children and their families, but has created unhealthier children and a more intense, mind numbing introduction of sex, vulgarity and ultra-violence into a child’s life.
This exposure does not only keep our kids quiet for the amount of time it lasts, but creates a ticking time bomb of sexual curiosity and vulgarity. When they are put into real life interactions and are clueless what they should do, they will fall back onto the world they are used to. This behavior get a child in trouble and then confuses the child, because instead of being taught how to communicate and deal with situations that may arise, they were hypnotized and brainwashed by the false reality that the media has created. The confusion created by the punishment they received makes them angry at reality and either creates a more violent and vulgar child, or will make them more dependant on media which in turn pulls them away from anything not having to do with “their reality.”
According to A.C. Nielson Co., the average American watches 4 hours and 35 minutes of TV each day. By the age of 65 the average American will have spent nearly 9 years glued to the tube. A poll taken in 1994 showed that 70 percent of day-care facilities use a TV during the day. In 1999 even the AAP stood up and said something about television urging parents to avoid letting their children 2 and under watch any television (Yes Ernie, even you). One of the reasons may be that for every hour a child watches TV each day, their risk of becoming overweight is increased by six percent and their risk of developing attention-related problems is increased by ten percent.4 If this doesn’t grab you by the neo-cortex, twist a little, and have you screaming addiction, then I’m sorry my good friend you are the weakest link, Goodbye (So NOW I know why I have a condescending English woman talking in my head.)
A lot of people will argue that there is educational television that helps children learn and they are sort of right. The learning is passive and the child does not even realize the process is happening. If these children don’t realize that there is something good happening in their brains when they watch these channels, which they will never notice, what is stopping them from changing the channel when they learn what those pretty buttons on the “clicker” do? I mean it is universally known that humans just do not like thinking, they hate it. What about these children and toddlers who don’t understand what’s happening. They have the choice to watch a prehistoric overfriendly dinosaur talking about sharing, or they can watch a little tan
Television is used as a form of recreation and a form of relaxation after a hard day’s work which nowadays will usually consist of staring at a computer screen. But when most people think they are watching television to loosen up and relax, it is quite the contrary. Jerry Mander, author of “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television” states that:
“Television offers neither rest nor stimulation. Television inhibits your ability to think, but it does not lead to freedom of the mind, relaxation or renewal. It leads to a more exhausted mind. You may have time out from prior obsessive thought patterns, but that’s as far as television goes. The mind is never empty, the mind is filled. What’s worse, it is filled with someone else’s obsessive thoughts and images.”5
In a perfect world, people would realize the problems the excessive amount of television watching creates and would take a sledgehammer to their television screens. But people, as we already know, have admitted to the harm caused by television and still are glued to it. Children will progressively (remember its ALL progress in the corporate world) become more and more separated from their families and reality if these trends in television watching continue. Either parents need to take control of their children’s TV habits by limiting watching, or just controlling the shows they watch. If they won’t take that action, which is seems is the case, then someone needs to get the television eradicated. But look at us, we defend the television like it is a child of ours, like it is a blood relative who’s perishing would drive us into a downward spiral. We vacuum the ocean floors clean of anything crawling, squirming, swimming, just to pick and choose what is good enough for us. We clear cut hundreds of thousands of rainforest, destroying homes and murdering anything in the path whether it is attempting to stop us or not. We allow the destruction of our home, the land that was kind enough to let us live on it. The worse part about this is it is all broadcasted on the television. Everything that is happening is broadcasted, we either choose to ignore it or are too busy worrying about the REAL issues (like, oh my god, did you see that dress Jessica Alba was wearing?) and as the world is destroyed we protect and watch this box of death like it was a god speaking the meaning of life to us.
1. Crisis Connection. 30 October 2006. Indiana Sherrif’s association. 30 March 2007 http://www.crisisconnectioninc.org/teens/mediainfluence.htm
2. See above
3. TV TURN-OFF. 23 March 2007. American Family Radio Network. 30 March 2007 http://www.tvturnoff.org/factsheets.htm
4. See Above
5. Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.
