Turn Off TV. Turn on Life.

By Ann Vorisek White
Web Exclusive

The average American child watches four hours of television every day, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.1 Videotapes and video games add to the amount of time children spend staring at a screen. How does all this viewing affect us?

Television harms our children and families in many ways. Before TV, meals were a time for families to reflect upon the day and linger in peace or lively discussion over home-cooked meals. Today, most American families regularly watch television during dinner.2

Mealtimes are hurried, with children and adults eating in silence, eyes glued to the screen, or gobbling down their food in order to return to the family room to resume their interrupted television watching.

Childhood illnesses and injuries leading to bed rest used to be special times for bonding and family rituals. We can recall books that were read to us or quiet games that we played while recovering from chicken pox or a broken leg. Today, sick children spend their days watching videos and television.

In the past, holiday gatherings found children playing outdoors and adults gathered in lively discussions. Today, children are more apt to gather around the television or computer than to take up a game of kick-the-can or capture-the-flag. In fact, some family gatherings seem to revolve around TV, with Thanksgiving dinners prepared to suit the timing of football games.

As a result of the many hours they spend in front of the TV, children are in effect being parented by network producers rather than by their own parents. Television teaches children that rude, irresponsible behavior is not only acceptable but also glamorous. Children learn about sex and violence apart from their consequences, emotional attachments, and responsibilities. They learn to act impulsively, without reflection or advice from elders. Qualities such as wisdom and processes like thinking through a problem are difficult to express on a television screen, especially when the medium depends on sensationalism and shock rather than character and insight.

US Surgeon General David Satcher stated in a 2000 report on youth violence that violent television programming and video games have become a public-health issue and that "repeated exposure to violent entertainment during early childhood causes more aggressive behavior throughout a child's life.3 The American Psychological Association (APA) notes that children who regularly watch violence on television are more fearful and distrustful of the world, less bothered by violence, and slower to intervene or call for help when they see fighting or destructive behavior.4 A Los Angeles Times story reported that 91 percent of children polled said they felt "upset" or "scared" by violence on television.5 A University of Pennsylvania study found that children's TV shows contain roughly 20 acts of violence each hour.6 After watching violent programs, the APA reports, children are more likely to act out aggressively, and children who are regularly exposed to violent programming show a greater tendency toward hitting, arguing, leaving tasks unfinished, and impatience.7 The first two years of life is when the greatest and most rapid development of the brain occurs. As all parents know, a child's mind is different from an adult's, and the differences go beyond children's innocent and often poetic perceptions of the world. While the adult brain has two distinct hemispheres, the infant brain is a single receptacle of sensory experience in which neither side has developed or overpowered the other. Until they learn language, children absorb experience using a kind of nonverbal "thinking," characterized later in the brain's development as a right hemispheric function. When language begins, each hemisphere seems to be equally developed. In its structural and biochemical sense, the brain doesn't reach its full maturation until about age 12.