Impact of Television

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Impact of Television

Post by Guest_1 » 09 May 2008 10:44

http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/TVtruth.htm

I recently came across an article that seems well researched and well written by Lawrence Keleman. It actually seems much more harmful than I ever thought. It's making me think very deeply about the amount of time I spend watching Family Guy. What are your thoughts?
The Harmful effects of Television and Videos. "Reality TV"



The Truth About Television
by Lawrence Kelemen

*Abbreviated version of "What they don't want you to know about television and videos." CLICK FOR FULL VERSION


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Alcohol

...alcohol is the most consumed beverage on prime time television shows. Television characters drink alcohol twice as often as they drink tea or coffee, 14 times as frequently as soft drinks, and 15 times more often than water.

Each year, students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol - more than they spend on soft-drinks, tea, milk, juice, coffee, and books combined. Alcohol is implicated in more than 40% of all academic problems and 28% of all dropouts.

On a typical weekend in America, an average of one teenager dies every two hours in a car crash involving alcohol.

Violence

In 1993, the average child living in the United States watched 10,000 murders, assaults, and other violent acts on television, and 1997 that number climbed to 12,000 and is still rising.

The Surgeon General's 2001 report cited statistical links between television watching and violent behavior similar in strength to the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer.

Commercialism

Gene DeWitt, chairman of one of the leading firms selling television advertising time admitted, "There's no point in moralizing whether this is a good or a bad thing. Television is a business whose purpose is gathering audience."

In 1997 the average U.S. child watched television 25 hours a week, he spent 260 full hours (or the equivalent of 6.5 weeks of forty-hour-per-week shifts) just watching commercials.

This is significant when we consider that the most essential product of the advertising industry is hunger. That is, commercials are intended to create a feeling of lack in the viewer, a deep ache that can only be assuaged by purchasing the product. As Dr. Neil Postman, chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University, points out, "What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer."56 So we hand our children over to Madison Avenue to be told, hundreds of hours a year, how hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular they are and will continue to be until they spend (or persuade their parents to spend) a few more dollars. And then we wonder why our children feel so hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular, and why they are so needy.

Achievement and Intelligence

Japanese researchers conducted some of the earliest research on the relationship between television and impaired academic achievement. In 1962, they published findings that reading skills declined among Japanese fifth to seventh graders as soon as their family acquired a television set.

Two years later, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare conducted the first large-scale American study. The survey, covering 650,000 students in 4,000 U.S. schools, included a handful of questions about television viewing patterns. Government officials were surprised to discover that the more television students watched, the lower their achievement scores.

Five Paths to Cognitive Damage

Since our children sit passively while the television dances, their ability to become deeply involved with books, school teachers, and other less frenetic sources of wisdom -- their ability to think -- atrophies. It should be no wonder that they abandon books, manifest lower intelligence quotients, fail to achieve academically, and have depressed professional aspirations.

A study of gifted fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, included in the Surgeon General's report, shows that watching a range of television shows - from cartoons to "educational television" -- depresses the students' subsequent creativity scores.

A fifth explanation emerged from the work of Harvard University Professor T. Berry Brazelton. Brazelton hooked newborn babies up to electroencephalographs and then exposed them to a flickering light source similar to a television but with no images. Fifteen minutes into their exposure, the babies stopped crying and produced sleep patterns on the EEG, even though their eyes were still open and observing the light. Brazelton's experiment revealed that the medium itself, with no content, acts directly on the brain to suppress mental activity. The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry confirmed Brazelton's finding in 1982. They reported that the brain waves generated while watching even the most exciting shows were those of low attention states. The researchers found that while subjects viewed television, "output of alpha rhythms increased, indicating they were in a passive state, as if they were just sitting in the dark."

Social Interaction

Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim suggests that television retards social skills not just by depriving children of playtime, but also by accustoming them to unrealistically stimulating characters:

Children who have been taught, or conditioned, to listen passively most of the day to the warm verbal communications coming from the TV screen, to the deep emotional appeal of the so-called TV personality, are often unable to respond to real persons because they arouse so much less feeling than the skilled actor.

Obesity

Television makes children fat. Harvard University researchers discovered that the odds of a child becoming obese rise 12 to 20% for each daily hour of television he watches. Epidemiologists also agree that watching two or more hours of television daily is a global marker for high risk of pediatric hypercholesterolemia.

...the snacks children consume while watching television are overwhelmingly high in fat, cholesterol, salt, and sugar, and low in vitamins, minerals, and fiber. The U.S. Surgeon General attributes these unhealthful snacking habits to the success of television advertising. He writes that the average American child sees 2,500 commercials a year for "high-calorie, high-sugar, low nutrition products." He also reveals that 70% of food advertisements are for foods high in fat, cholesterol, sugar, and salt, while only 3% are for fruits and vegetables.

Consistent with the Surgeon General's theory, epidemiologists at the University of Minnesota surveying children's Saturday morning television recently discovered that 56.5% of all commercials on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and Nickelodeon advertised food products, and the most frequently advertised product was high-sugar cereal. Comparing the food products advertised on TV with the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations for pediatric diet, the researchers found that "the diet depicted in Saturday morning television programming is the antithesis of what is recommended for healthful eating for children." They further observed that children see a food commercial about every five minutes on Saturday morning TV, and that the main explicit messages used to sell food products are taste and the promise of a free toy.

Attention Deficit Disorder

...Then came the report from the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center: "Sesame Street creates a psychological orientation in children that leads to a shortened attention span, a lack of reflectiveness, and an expectation of rapid change in the broader environment." The Yale researchers warned that "well intentioned parents who allow their children to watch nothing but Sesame Street...might actually be encouraging over-stimulation and frenetic behavior."

© Lawrence Kelemen

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Post by gMoney » 10 May 2008 17:52

some guy wrote:Technology: the downfall of society.

I've been on the internet too much. I don't really watch TV, but I definately spend too much time on the computer. They're both very mind corroding and controlling.
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Post by Jeremy » 10 May 2008 18:01

Growing up it was pretty noticeable to me that my core group of friends were all very high academic achievers and the majority of us didn't have TVs at home and didn't talk about TV. I didn't have a TV until I was 9 or 10 and then my parents were very controlling of what we were allowed to watch until I left home. I still barely watch TV, although I do spend a lot of time on the internet. It seems pretty unconstructive.

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Post by Blue_turnip » 10 May 2008 22:34

When I think about the time I spent watching TV as a child I feel very sad. I could have been out getting pro at chess or something. I never watch TV anymore but only because computers are even more addictive.
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Post by Ramen God » 05 Jun 2010 11:45

I love TV, and I know it is all bad and stuff, but I don't just vegetate while watching TV.

I practice some basic footbag skills while watching TV, and I never watch more than an hour or so a day.

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Post by habitat » 07 Jun 2010 00:35

Ramen God wrote:I love TV, and I know it is all bad and stuff, but I don't just vegetate while watching TV.

I practice some basic footbag skills while watching TV, and I never watch more than an hour or so a day.
So the question on everyone's mind is what is your favorite flavor.?>

Shrimp
Image



Or


Chili


Image
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Post by Jeremy » 07 Jun 2010 05:34

Are you serious James Randall?

Mi Goreng original, although technically not ramen, is close enough, and the best. Fact.

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 09 Jun 2010 11:30

It's funny that instant ramen noodles comes up in a thread like this, because when you combine television with the shitty excito-toxin, MSG laced food that kids eat today and you have the perfect recipe for a very easily controlled, lazy, apathetic society.

As Chomsky once (roughly) said, use of propaganda is to democracy what use of force is to totalitarianism. Without a constant bombardment of spin, it's hard to see our current system maintaining itself organically.
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Post by Ramen God » 17 Jun 2010 04:56

If you want to know what the god of ramen's favorite flavor is I'll give you a couple of my favorites.

Image

But above all, this is my favorite, dry or in broth
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Post by Ramen God » 17 Jun 2010 04:58

The exact reply of habitat's question if both. I love shrimp and chili.

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Post by habitat » 21 Jun 2010 21:29

Ramen God wrote:The exact reply of habitat's question if both. I love shrimp and chili.
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Post by Ramen God » 23 Jun 2010 04:10

8O

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Post by Ramen God » 23 Jun 2010 04:10

8O

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Post by Jeremy » 23 Jun 2010 19:11

:x

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Post by charlesallen » 30 Sep 2010 04:14

Watching TV was just the thing which I do in my spare time in my childhood and also in teenage but now when I spend most of my time in front of computer so my eyes don't have the strength to watch so much TV after spending long hours in front of computer but since I am a great fan of sports so I have to watch TV on weekends to watch live sports events.
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Post by Pinkus » 19 Apr 2011 19:56

TV inhibits real learning, unless you watch educational stuff. It's too bad hardly anyone watches anything educational.

I sometimes watch spongebob because it has educated me on what the ocean and its' inhabitants are like.

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Post by crazylegs32 » 13 Jun 2011 22:19

I didnt watch tv as a kid, thats why im much smarter than the rest of Chicago kickers LMAO.

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