Steve Watson
TV turns you into a zombie.
While these words are more often than not used as a tiresome metaphor
to highlight how much crap we are forced to endure on television today,
they do in fact serve as a deadly accurate
literal statement.
Two separate studies this month alone have found that excessive
amounts of television, even if it is merely on in the background, can
detrimentally effect the development of children’s brains, to the point
where they struggle to socially engage when they become older.
Add to this the already extensively documented impact that the
television has on all of us, the power it has to literally alter our
consciousness and shut down critical thinking, and it is no wonder that
it was long ago dubbed the idiot box.
As reported by
Reuters this
month, researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington
(UNCW), found that background noise emitted from television is so
distracting and mesmerizing to children that it is impacting their
ability to interact with other human beings and potentially slowing down
cognitive thinking and language development.
The study, published in the journal
Pediatrics,
found that children in the US are now exposed to more than five hours a
day of television. Matthew Lapierre, who led the study, explained that
children who are subjected to the most TV spend less time interacting
with other children and parents.
Lapierre also found that younger children are subjected to the most background television.
“This is a clear warning signal to parents that if they are not
watching TV, they ought to turn it off,” said Dr. Victor Strasburger, a
pediatrician from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who has
previously studied media exposure among children. “[It is also] a
reminder that parents should be avoiding screen time in infants under
two.” he said.
“It’s confusing for babies who are trying to get their language
together to have indistinguishable voices in the background.”
Strasburger also noted, telling reporters that when parents bring their
children to him, he can tell which toddlers are over exposed to TV.
“The babies that are being read to are just chattering away, and the
babies that sit in front of a TV are silent,” he said. “It means their
language development is threatened – they may catch up, but it’s a
concern.”
In a
separate study,
doctors at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in London
found that children born today will have watched a full year of
television by the time they are seven years old. The study also found
that on average children now spend more time watching television than
they do in school.
Dr Aric Sigman published the study in the
Archives Of Disease In Childhood, a medical journey jointly own by the British Medical Journal group.
Sigman noted that such extensive exposure to television can lead to a
void when it comes to social relationships, can lead to attention
deficit problems, and can promote significant psychological
difficulties.
Sigman also noted that over exposure to new technologies such as 3D
televisions and consoles could seriously affect the development of depth
perception in children.
The study recommends preventing children under three years old from
watching television altogether, and says that all children should be
limited to less than two hours of TV per day.
“As health risks are reported to occur beyond exposure of two hours
of screen time per day, although the average child is exposed to three
times this amount, a robust initiative to encourage a reduction in daily
recreational screen time could lead to significant improvements in
child health and development.” Sigman noted.
In a
report issued one year ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics pointed out that
scores of previous studies have come to the same conclusions; that there is a direct link between increased TV time and developmental delays in children.
In 2010,
another study published in
Pediatrics,
found that during analysis of over 1,000 children between the ages of
ten and eleven, those who spend at least two hours a day in front of a
television screen are 60 percent more likely to have psychological
problems than children who spend less or no time. The study also noted
that even children taking part in physical activities but still watching
TV are still fifty percent more likely to suffer problems such as
hyperactivity, difficulty with peers and friends, poor conduct and
antisocial kinds of behavior.
Further studies published in the
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that children exposed to more TV are significantly more likely to
exhibit aggressive behavior and
perform poorly in school.
In addition, the findings noted that children who watch more TV are
more likely to eat more junk-food and suffer bullying at the hands of
classmates – consequences that have their own brain re-wiring effects.
Other recent scientific studies have noted that many
programs produced specifically for children
may have even worse effects on their development because they are very
fast moving, thus overtaxing the brain and promoting reduced attention
span.
Owing to such proven effects of television and video games,
children’s minds are being numbed before they have even developed. By
the time they reach adulthood, they act according to decisions made to a
great extent unconsciously. They are effectively zombies; humans
operating with an impulsive, reactionary mind set, at the expense of
logical analysis and critical thought.
And kids are not the only ones who are susceptible to television’s ability to create armies of the walking dead.
It is commonly known that television flicker rates induce alpha brain
waves, lulling the brain into a more subconscious state that can be
compared to sleep, literally inducing a type of hypnosis within the
viewer that makes them more susceptible to suggestion.
This has been known since the 1960s, and was most notably proven in an experiment in 1969, by
Herbert Krugman.
The research, undertaken by Krugman as part of a larger project
concerned with advertising, revealed that the brain’s left hemisphere,
which processes information logically and analytically, effectively
tunes out almost completely when an individual watches television.
The radiant light and flicker rate of television screens cause brain
activity to drop toward more of a theta state. Critical thinking
reduces, leaving the parts of the brain that hold memories, sensations
and emotions the most active. Whatever is coming from the TV therefore
somewhat bypasses the logical mind and is embedded directly into the
subconscious. In other words, TV appeals more to emotions than logic.
Numerous studies
have also found that flicker rates in video games cause altered
consciousness. Some have been shown to reduce brain activity to below
Delta frequency.
Other studies have
also flagged up a link between watching too much television and
Alzheimer’s disease. The semi conscious state induced by television is
thought to directly contribute to the symptoms of memory, speech and
perception problems.
Krugman also discovered that reading and listening to audio increases
cognition and builds neuron paths because you have to think critically
and envision the “theater of the mind”.
In addition, the crossover from the left to the right brain induced
by watching television, causes a release of the body’s natural opiates,
similar to a release of endorphins when exercising. This has the effect
of making the viewer feel good. Consequently, withdrawal symptoms can
kick in if viewers turn off the turn. As with any form of
opiate-withdrawal, symptoms include increased anxiety, frustration, and
depression.
Experiments conducted in the 1970s found that people who turn off
their TVs for long periods after prolonged viewing suffer from
depression, with some noting that they felt as though they had “lost a
friend.”
A combination of four studies, published in the
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, concluded that
television shows can instill a sense of belonging
in viewers with low self-esteem and a lack of social relationships.
Referring to the notion as social surrogacy hypothesis, psychologists at
the University at Buffalo and Miami University, Ohio, found that in
order to fill the emotional void of social deprivation, some people
forge relationships with fictional characters in TV shows.
TV really is the opiate of the masses.
Of course, what I describe here is only a snapshot. We are today
bombarded from all angles with distractions, substances, and conditions
created to transform the way we interpret our reality. We are being
conditioned from birth to act increasingly without consciousness; the
one thing that sets us apart from every other living thing in the known
universe.
We are literally being programmed into a waking sleep, a zombie-like
existence. We must act vigilantly and educate others if we are to break
this programming and preserve our humanity.
NewsRescue
