-
What Influence Does the Media Have on You and Your Children?
We are called to Love God with our Mind: Matthew 22:36-29: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" *Jesus replied: "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: `Love your neighbour as yourself.'
We are called to think godly thoughts: Philippians 4:8 : Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.
We are commanded to test the thinking of our culture: 1 Thess 5: 21-22 Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.
We are taught to renew our minds Romans 12:2: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Keep these scriptures in mind as you read the following:
- Television statistics: Some compelling statistics of the pervasive influence of the TV on our culture.
- TV A Different Kind of Teacher: An Article by Dr. Paul Kienel, Founder and President Emeritus of ACSI.
- The Twenty-Third Channel: A thoughtful parody on the 23rd Psalm for the TV generation.
- Explaining the Childhood Brain-Drain: An essay by educational psychologist Jane Healy.
- National TV turn-off week: National TV-Turnoff Week is part of a broadly supported effort to reduce the amount of television Americans watch.
- According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube.
- I. FAMILY LIFE
-
- Percentage of households that possess at least one television: 99
- Number of TV sets in the average U.S. household: 2.24
- Percentage of U.S. homes with three or more TV sets: 66
- Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes
- Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66
- Number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans: 250 billion
- Value of that time assuming an average wage of S5/hour: S1.25 trillion
- Percentage of Americans who pay for cable TV: 56
- Number of videos rented daily in the U.S.: 6 million
- Number of public library items checked out daily: 3 million
- Percentage of Americans who say they watch too much TV: 49
- II CHILDREN
-
- Approximate number of studies examining TV's effects on children: 4,000
- Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful
- conversation with their children: 3.5
- Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680
- Percentage of day care centers that use TV during a typical day: 70
- Percentage of parents who would like to limit their children's TV watching: 73
- Percentage of 4-6 year-olds who, when asked to choose between watching TV
- and spending time with their fathers, preferred television: 54
- Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours
- Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500
- III VIOLENCE
-
- Number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000
- Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
- Percentage of Americans who believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem: 79
- IV. COMMERCIALISM
-
- Number of 30-second TV commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000
- Number of TV commercials seen by the average person by age 65: 2 million
- Percentage of survey participants (1993) who said that TV commercials
- aimed at children make them too materialistic: 92
- Rank of food products/fast-food restaurants among TV advertisements to kids: 1
- Total spending by 100 leading TV advertisers in 1993: $15 billion
- V. GENERAL
-
- Percentage of local TV news broadcast time devoted to advertising: 30
- Percentage devoted to stories about crime, disaster and war: 53.8
- Percentage devoted to public service announcements: 0.7
- Percentage of Americans who can name The Three Stooges: 59
- Percentage who can name at least three justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: 17
- Compiled by TV-Free America
- 1322 18th Street, NW
- Washington, DC 20036
- (202) 887-4036
- by Dr. Paul Kienel
- Founder and President Emeritus
- Association of Christian Schools International
- Christian School Comment
- The Association of Christian Schools International
- Volume 28, no. 5
Les MacLeod, a teacher in an ACSI member school in Santa Rosa, California has asked me to write an issue of Christian School Comment about the impact of television on students. I am happy to comply.
Most agree that television monitoring in the average family is one of the things that parents do not do very well. The sheer time required to sit with "clicker" in hand and observe what our children are watching is a major challenge. But to ignore the problem is not the answer to this dilemma. We are, indeed, responsible for the total environment of our children including television.
If your children are like most youngsters, they watch television 22 hours per week!' Most of what they see contradicts wholesome family values and it must, indeed, grieve the heart of God. I wonder if the Psalmist David had television in mind when he wrote, "I will set before my eyes no vile thing" (Psalms 101:3)?
Speaking of television, one social commentator said:
Television is a powerful and mesmerizing "waste of time," a stimulus to undesirable responses in children, a social educator, a baby-sitter, a technological agent for mass consumer socialization, and a perpetrator of questionable social values, morals, and mythified human behaviors
Nicholas Johnson, a former FCC Commissioner, wrote, "All television is educational television. The only question is, 'What is it teaching?"'3 Due to the fast pace of television "teaching by television" has yet to be regarded on a par with an inspiring, patient classroom teacher. TV, however, is a teacher, but a different kind of teacher. Note the following:
The recent literature on TV and children has led many to believe that TV is usurping the role of schools as a primary institution for socializing youth, for transmitting culturally relevant knowledge and values, and, in short, shaping life and society in North America. Some teachers comment on how TV intrudes into the classroom: schoolyard play replicates the behaviors, relationships, and interaction and popular, often violent, TV programs; others have found that creative writing and journal-keeping, for many children, is little more than an exercise in recounting the endless hours and TV programs watched. Undoubtedly, what and how much TV children watch is of serious concern to educators.4
While TV may not be the best way to teach long division, it directly and indirectly teaches life's values. As Michael Medved said, "Television has the power to redefine normal."5 I don't know about you but the idea that Hollywood is defining what is "normal" sickens me. His statement brings into clear focus what we have known all along that the products of Hollywood, namely television, movies and yes, the interned represent a powerful influence on the behavior and lifestyle patterns of our children. The film moguls of Hollywood do not represent Christian family values nor even most non-Christian family values. In his article, "Hollywood's 3 Big Lies," Michael Medved wrote, ". . . recent surveys reveal that an overwhelming majority of Americans feel Hollywood is out of touch with their personal values."6
The Hollywood community's response to criticism is predictable. It claims that what it produces is pure entertainment and that it has no negative impact on society. Medved says:
Of course, popular entertainment is not the only determinant of violent or promiscuous behavior. But evidence from more than 60 major university studies shows that prolonged exposure to violent images on television does lead to more hostile, violent and aggressive attitudes and behavior in real life.'
There is no question that prolonged exposure to television, movies or the Internet will shape our values and especially the values of our children. We must not succumb to worldly patterns when it comes to television. I commend to you the good counsel of Dr. Tim LaHaye:
1) Establish TV viewing as a privilege, not a right; consequently, the owner of the set has the option to regulate and approve its use.
2) Only approved programs may be watched ... news, sports, religious programs, public affairs, appropriate specials, and clean family programs (if you can find any).
3) Set time limits for viewing. One or two hours a night of even morally neutral programming can adversely affect children at certain grade levels.
4) Once a program has violated your moral values, scratch it off your list.
5) Create alternatives to TV. After dinner devotions, a game or two, a project, homework, and bedtime reading can complete any day's agendas
We must control the amount of time the television is on in our homes. Don't be like the average male viewer in America:
An average male viewer between the time he is ten years old and sixty-five years old will watch television for approximately 3,000 entire days, or roughly nine years of his life!9
There is no scripture in the Bible that authorizes you or me to spend nine years of our lives watching television. God created us and our children for a much higher purpose. Our children learn to live by the way we live. If they observe that we, as parents, are undisciplined "couch potatoes" who watch anything and everything on TV, we should not be surprised when they become "junior couch potatoes" and start taking on lifestyle patterns similar to those of their TV mentors.
Someone said, "television is the most 'mass' of the mass media. People don't just 'watch' television, they live it!" If that is true for adults it is even more true for children and young peopled
I conclude with this sobering passage of scripture:
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23 NKJ). t
- 1 Michael Medved, Sour Plague of Pessimism," Reader's Digest, April, 1996, p. 113.
- 2 Michael E. Manley-Casimir and Carmen Luke, Children and
- Television, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1987} Preface Vll.
- 3 Ibid, p. 10.
- 4 Ibid, Preface VJ.
- 5 Medved, p. 157.
- 6 Ibid, p. 155.
- 7 Ibid, p. 156.
- º Dr Tim LaHaye, "Television," Handbook for Christian living, Paul A. Kienel. editor (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1991) pp. 298-299.
- 9 N. Johnson, How to Talk Bus to Your Television Set (Boston: Brown & Co., 1970) p. 11. quoted in Manley-Casimir, p.ll2.
- 'º Green, US Department of Health, Education and Webare. 1975.
|
|
Explaining the Childhood Brain-Drain: An essay by Jane Healy, PhD
Is a brain that has watched a lot of TV or played countless hours of video games different from one that has not – and would it be harder to educate in a traditional classroom? The answer to both questions appears to be “yes.” Growing brains are shaped physically by experiences. Neurons in the brain, responding to sensory stimuli, build new physical connections, called synapses, to neighboring cells. The synapses form networks that are the neurological foundations for reading comprehension, analytical thinking, sustained attention and problem-solving. Active interest and mental effort by the child are crucial to the formation of these networks. Every response to sights, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes makes more connections. The more work the brain does, the more it becomes capable of doing. Yet by ages three to five – the brain’s critical period for cognitive and language development – the average child is watching television approximately twenty-eight hours per week.
Research indicates that intensive viewing has the potential for at least three effects on the growing brain, any of which could interfere with a child’s natural potential for intelligence and creativity. First, excessive television watching may reduce stimulation to left-hemisphere systems critical for development of language, reading and analytic thinking. In addition, it may affect mental ability and attention by diminishing mental traffic between the hemispheres. Finally, it may discourage development of “executive” systems that regulate attention, organization and motivation.
Children who never learn to understand and remember language without pictures attached have difficulty in school when they must listen to a teacher or to the author of a textbook. They look around for meaning instead of creating it inside their own heads. They may also have difficulty patterning information; that is, organizing and associating new information with previously developed mental connections.
According to Dr. Jerre Levy, biopsychologist at the University of Chicago and an internationally known authority on hemispheric development, “When children commit time looking at TV, they’re not spending time reading. When a child reads a novel, he has to self-create whole scenarios, he has to create images of who these people are, what their emotions are, what their tones of voice are, what the environment looks like, what the feeling of this environment is. These self-created scenarios are important, and television leaves no room for that creative process. . . . Brains are designed to meet cognitive challenges. It’s just like muscles; if you don’t exercise them they wither. If you don’t exercise brains, they wither.”
