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TV 'stunts' child brain development
The Press Association ^ | 10/3/05

Posted on 10/06/2005 1:10:36 AM PDT by Crackingham

Watching TV may damage children's brain development leading to increased anti-social behaviour, new research claims. There is also a correlation between the amount of television children watch and the degree of educational damage they suffer, according to the report by Dr Aric Sigman, who is an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. And significant long term damage occurs even at so-called modest levels of viewing - between one and two hours a day, the report, entitled Remotely Controlled, says.

Children now spend more time watching a TV screen than they spend in school, but viewing even a moderate amount can dramatically increase their risk of myopia, slow down their metabolic rate and may trigger premature puberty, according to Dr Sigman. It was also found to lead to a "significantly elevated risk" of sleep problems in adulthood, causing hormone changes, which in turn directly increase appetite and body fat production and damage the immune system leading to a greater vulnerability to cancer,

While the average Briton watches four hours of TV a day, children aged 11-15 spend seven and a half hours a day watching TV and computers - an increase of 40% in a decade -the scientist claims. More than half of three-year-olds have a TV set in their bedrooms and the average six-year-old will have already watched nearly one full year of their lives.

Dr Sigman said: "A 'dose-response relationship' between the amount of television children watch and the degree of educational damage they suffer is now emerging which has 'biological plausibility'.

"Television viewing is also now linked with stunting brain development in the child's frontal lobes leading to reduced impulse control and increased antisocial behaviour.

"Teachers are under pressure to vie for the child's attentional resources which have been damaged by exposure to fast changing screen images. This leaves teachers facing a generation of children who find it more difficult to pay attention and thereby learn but also exhibit poor self-restraint and anti-social behaviour," Dr Sigman added.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: brain; duh; education; family; health; televison; toomuchtv; tv
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To: ordinaryguy
That would be an interesting experiment. I don't know whether it would turn out that way or whether television is an inherently unhealthy medium.

TV is a information medium, if you put in garbage, you get lower IQ's. If you put in quality tv series, you get high IQ's.

21 posted on 10/06/2005 2:09:11 AM PDT by Paul C. Jesup
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To: ordinaryguy

One wishes the explanation were that mundane.

22 posted on 10/06/2005 2:09:46 AM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: Paul C. Jesup
Observe the expressions of people watching television and those watching a play. The expressions are completely different. Even Shakespeare on television versus a non-intellectual play will still show a stark contrast. You can substitute a movie for television if you like, to make the physical environments more alike.

If you put in quality tv series, you get high IQ's.

In your previous post you wondered about this. You now seem to be stating it as a fact. Did you find, between your postings, actual research supporting the position?

23 posted on 10/06/2005 2:19:17 AM PDT by ordinaryguy
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To: ordinaryguy
Blip blip blip blipverts. You know know they'll be onto you like stink on shi shi shi

excrement.
24 posted on 10/06/2005 2:21:40 AM PDT by NewRomeTacitus (Have faith in God, because Man will disappoint you every time.)
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To: HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity

What are you trying to imply with the Clinton picture? Does Clinton have a television studio where he produces content to dumb down America? When the administrations changed, did Rove put his hurricane machine in the same room Clinton had used for that studio?


25 posted on 10/06/2005 2:22:40 AM PDT by ordinaryguy
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To: ordinaryguy

Sounds like there will be a larger democratic population in the future. Who would watch that much TV anyway? My kids are allowed only on Saturdays and one movie night per week, plus I didn't even have a TV in the house for their first eight to ten years. Are they smarter? Dunno, but they can entertain themselves and behave better than other kids.
Truthfully though, didn't we all learn our alphabet and numbers from "educational tv"?


26 posted on 10/06/2005 2:29:32 AM PDT by momincombatboots (Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber)
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To: ordinaryguy

It's a logical conclusion. For except, put on a good, thought provoking sci-fi series, you note the expressions on the faces of people are far more intelligent than the zoombie like expressions will have when they watch something like a mindless soap opera.


27 posted on 10/06/2005 2:47:22 AM PDT by Paul C. Jesup
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To: momincombatboots
It sounds like you are a pretty good mom! I'm sure your kids will appreciate you for a lifetime.

I didn't learn ABCs and 123s from an electronic box. My mother taught me one-on-one. I was lucky.

28 posted on 10/06/2005 2:55:40 AM PDT by ordinaryguy
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To: Paul C. Jesup
The content can affect the viewer's expression, but the medium has a much greater effect. I've long observed and noted how people react to different media and content. I've yet to see any television programming which causes the viewer's expression to come anywhere near that of someone attending a play.

Television can be an informational medium, as can a book. If you read a passage describing how green an alien's face is, the physiological reaction in your brain is much different than what you would experience seeing a green alien while watching your "good, thought provoking sci-fi series."

The medium has a profound impact on how the message is received. The Kennedy-Nixon debate showed us a difference between experiencing the same event via television versus radio.

29 posted on 10/06/2005 3:17:57 AM PDT by ordinaryguy
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To: ordinaryguy
The Kennedy-Nixon debate showed us a difference between experiencing the same event via television versus radio.

The Kennedy-Nixon debate was the first time leftist bias in the media was so bluntly used. They won't put make-up on Nixon and screwed with the lighting to make him look worse.

30 posted on 10/06/2005 3:38:19 AM PDT by Paul C. Jesup
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To: Paul C. Jesup

>>But I would not be surprised if quality shows with good plots and character developement actually increased a child's intelligence.<<

Amen!
Turn on Dora or Blues Clues. Map skills, colors, counting, adding, etc.
My girls have always watched tv. Any mom who needs a trip to the bathroom will find tv to be great. But we are selective. While my neighbor was letting her three year old watch Powerpuff girls, we watched Studio Ghibli films in Japanese.
My daughter are now two years ahead academically. Like anything, one must be careful. Too much candy is bad, but we have to eat. Too much eye candy is bad, but tv is a wonderful tool.


31 posted on 10/06/2005 3:46:25 AM PDT by netmilsmom (God blessed me with a wonderful husband.)
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To: NewRomeTacitus

I don't know about stunting their brains, I do know it corrupts their morals and manners as they imitate their favorite cartoons and characters!


32 posted on 10/06/2005 3:49:43 AM PDT by GailA (Glory be to GOD and his only son Jesus.)
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To: Crackingham

I think what they are really seeing is that parents who care so little about interacting with their child that they let the TV be the baby sitter, are having more problem children than parents who are otherwise.


33 posted on 10/06/2005 3:51:31 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (No wonder the Southern Baptist Church threw Greer out: Only one god per church! [Ann Coulter])
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To: GailA

Hi Gail, long time no hear. Yes, the weirdness corrupts their influential minds with nothing objected to by most of their parents or overseers. It's a truly sociological problem that starts with the values of the entertained majority and what they'll accept.

I look at some of my neighbors like they are aliens from space for behaving so oddly, then I'll see refugee Hmong Vietmanese families going out of their way to go on family walks, picnics and such (away from televisions). They've got it right.


34 posted on 10/06/2005 4:08:53 AM PDT by NewRomeTacitus
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To: Crackingham

Excuse me, I was listening to the TV. What did ya'll say?

What's with this HTTP 404-File Not Found stuff?


35 posted on 10/06/2005 4:47:25 AM PDT by wolfcreek
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To: Paul C. Jesup
if you put in garbage, you get lower IQ's. If you put in quality tv series, you get high IQ's.

I would disagree. The very act of watching TV is detrimental to young minds. The content can make it more or less so, but it is still addictive. It causes kids to NOT be outside playing, NOT be reading, NOT be building things with Erector sets, NOT be interacting with others. And commercials make them want stuff and think that everyone else has it.

True, they can learn stuff from a good TV show, but the price is high.

36 posted on 10/06/2005 4:59:04 AM PDT by Izzy Dunne (Hello, I'm a TAGLINE virus. Please help me spread by copying me into YOUR tag line.)
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To: Crackingham

I am clearly seeing this in the classroom. Clearly.


37 posted on 10/06/2005 4:59:46 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: Crackingham

Reminds me of the observations of Marshall McLuhan in the days of TV infancy. Not that I necessarily agree or even understand all of them. Like:

With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is being sent.

With the radio and television we have simultaneous access to events on the entire planet. However, television culture diminishes, or amputates, many of the close ties of family life based on oral communication. The simple act of turning on a television can reduce a room of people to silence.

When McLuhan said that the medium is the message, he was trying to raise an alarm. Big debates over the content of media - such as the controversies over sex and violence on television - miss the point entirely, he argued, because the transformation of human life is carried on by the form of the medium rather than any specific program transmitted by it. Protesting the programs carried by the media is futile because the owners of the media are always happy to give the public exactly what it wants. Standing in opposition to any sort of programming is not only a lonely and isolating posture, it also serves to advance the popularity of the programming protested.

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam.

When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the public what to get, they say it in curves.

"Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. Man must serve his electronic technology with the same servo-mechanistic fidelity with which he served his coracle, his canoe, his typography, and all other extensions of his physical organs. But there is this difference, that previous technologies were partial and fragmentary, and the electric is total and inclusive.... No further acceleration is possible this side of the light barrier."

In our cool electronic culture, every message is repeated over and over, like spam in your e-mail box. "One can stop anywhere after the first few sentences and have the full message, if one is prepared to 'dig' it," wrote McLuhan, who was fond of repeating a slogan he claimed to have gotten from IBM: "Information overload = pattern recognition."

Not about electronic media, but I feel like posting them:

The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.

People don't actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.

If it works, it's obsolete.

The future of the book is the blurb.



38 posted on 10/06/2005 5:00:31 AM PDT by Northern Alliance
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To: durasell

I the ninties I did research on Television and Childhood intellegence. There was only one study that compared two towns, one with TV and one without. It was a year long study ...they were towns in a mounainous region waiting for cable.

The children's grades has an immediate and significant drop after cable was available.



39 posted on 10/06/2005 5:15:39 AM PDT by Chickensoup (Snake-ranching! Yeah, that's the ticket!)
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To: Paul C. Jesup

Studies have been done and those "high quality television shows" are no better than the garbabe because of the passive unfiltered way that television is received into the brain.


40 posted on 10/06/2005 5:18:43 AM PDT by Chickensoup (Snake-ranching! Yeah, that's the ticket!)
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