Television makes us fat, lazy, inattentive, unsociable, mistrustful, materialistic — and unhappy about all of that. It cheapens political discourse, weakens family ties, prevents face-to-face socializing, and exposes kids to sex and inures them to violence. Yet Americans can’t get enough. In 1950, just 9 percent of U.S. households owned a television; by 1960 it was 90 percent, and by the year 2000 TVs were just about everywhere. Now the average U.S. household has more TVs than people.
High-quality programs may enrich us, and moderate viewing is not so bad. We do not view moderately, though. According to the Nielsen Company, in 2009 the average American watched more TV per day (over five hours) than ever before. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably in better shape than most, since those who read seriously tend to watch less TV. But don’t get smug. As TV continues its inexorable merger with computers, the Internet, and mobile technology — when I write of TV, I mean not only the traditional boob tube but any way of transmitting video content from afar — even dedicated readers will contend with its siren song.
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The hunger for stimuli may result in our favoring visual media over print, and spectacle over depth. Print makes us translate words into mental imagery and sounds, which exercises our minds. Television is less taxing; it does all of the work for us. The late media theorist Neil Postman found in TV an inherent bias toward the shallow, and not just for sit-coms and the like. Eventually, programmers feel pressure to make even the news and other serious programming more entertaining, if only to compete with alternatives. When we are constantly bombarded with spectacular images, we find it harder than ever to face the weighty and comparatively dull issues of public life. Postman worried that our combined tendencies to take the path of least resistance and the path of greatest pleasure would mean a stampede from any kind of meaningful reading: “Television does not ban books, it simply displaces them.”
Recent events reveal Postman’s prescience. Witness AOL’s initiative to transform CliffsNotes book summaries into short, humorous online videos for students who can’t be bothered even to try hard at cheating. Traditional CliffsNotes offer text-based shortcuts to imitate knowledge’s external indicators without the hard work or educational benefits of reading the material. The newly proposed AOL videos offer shortcuts for shortcuts. Having stripped classic literature of all essential nutrients, the videos would add a comedic candy coating: a spoonful of sugar to help the sugar go down.
The same goes for public affairs. Because TV deals in images, “you cannot do political philosophy on television,” Postman argued. “Its form works against the content.” Postman and his fellow media guru Marshall McLuhan both insisted that “the medium is the message,” that it matters less what we watch than that we watch — watch rather than listen, read, or think in silence. Content is not irrelevant, of course: Watching violent programs in high doses correlates with reduced sociability and increased volatility, especially in youngsters. Watching crime shows and even news in high doses correlates with the excessive cynicism that the late media scholar George Gerbner called “mean-world syndrome,” which impedes social trust and public-spiritedness. And a number of economists have found that TV’s commercialism makes viewers more materialistic and less satisfied. All of those effects flow from television’s content. But to glimpse the small screen’s big picture we must see how the medium itself affects us.
Writing in 1985, Postman worried about TV content’s ever-increasing speed and flux: more fleeting images and stimuli every year. That trend has continued. The average shot length of American movies stood at 27.9 seconds in 1953, just after TV began its ascent, fell to 7.3 seconds in 1986 as MTV gradually took hold, and was 2.5 seconds in 2007. TV programs have followed a similar path. Why? Visual and aural stimuli trigger what Pavlov called our “orienting response,” a reaction to novel events that can be seen even in infants and that probably carried evolutionary advantages. Fast TV cuts get our attention. But we quickly acquire stimulant tolerance. In order to hold our attention, programs and advertisements use ever faster cuts and brighter colors. Who among us, having once seen The Electric Company as a child, could go back to watching Mister Rogers?
Unfortunately, the pace race carries costs. Communications scholar Annie Lang argues that when visual edits and cuts come too quickly, we still pay attention but cease retaining information effectively. And by making real life seem dull by comparison, they may impair our ability to pay attention to it.
Heavy TV viewing produces heavy TV viewers, not to mention ones who tend to be inattentive, lazy, gluttonous, and — no surprise after all of the preceding — unpopular. A 2010 study in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine finds that among toddlers, even when controlling for socio-economic status, “every additional hour of television exposure” corresponds to significant decreases in later “classroom engagement . . . math achievement . . . time spent doing weekend physical activity . . . and activities involving physical effort,” and significant increases in “victimization by classmates . . . consumption scores for soft drinks and snacks . . . and body mass index.” Among older children, heavy TV viewing correlates with inconsistent sleep patterns, a problem most intense among the high percentages of children with TVs in their bedrooms. (A multi-year report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the 71 percent of children 8–18 with TVs in their bedroom watch 56 percent more TV than those without them.) Adults who view heavily also experience problems with attention span, sleep patterns, and obesity. Researchers blame the obesity less on viewers’ physical inactivity than on the number of calories they consume with the tube on: Television induces a semi-hypnotic state in which we may eat without noticing quality or quantity.
I've been listening to this argument all my life; I still think it's misplaced and there's another part of the equation that's missing.
I watch less TV today than I ever did but as a kid in the 60's and 70's I consumed endless hours.
In spite of that, few kids (or parents) I knew back then were obese in the sense that all too many are today.
We played organized (and disorganized) sports, walked to school, and rode bikes to friends' houses instead of being chauferred around in SUV's - and this was in the city as well as the suburbs. We did plenty of less-physical things as well: model trains and planes, stamp and coin collecting, chemistry sets (stink bombs!) but there was balance.
And yeah, you had to get off your butt just to turn the TV on and off and adjust the contrast and volume. How many people today even know where the manual controls on their sets are (if they have them, that is)?
We had lots of friends because we had continuity in our neighborhoods, no doubt enabled by the prosperity that allowed our (primarily) fathers to work at the same jobs for years.
It's not hard to see what's changed: communities have become more transient and fragmented due to more volatile economic conditions and more rapid immigration rates. The traditional family unit is less stable.
I'm not sure crime is more prevalent or if media has just made us all more aware of it but I did things as an 11 year-old that I wouldn't dream of allowing an 11 year-old to do today (not illegal things, adventurous things like riding the entire length of the NYC subway system by myself (ok, except for one or two lines - I wasn't stupid even at that age).
I think all of these changes influence parents and the kids they're raising today and forces them to retreat inward. Stimulation becomes more seductive when your life is less fullfilled emotionally. The TV fills those needs in an inexpensive and immediate way.
I remember when you had to wait awhile for the TV to warm up; now a click and it's instantaneous.
Perhaps too much news has made me excessively cynical, but I find it amazing that no matter the income level, most everyone finds the dough to cram a 50+" flat screen into their living room. One can only imagine the deleterious effects of watching Man v. Food marathons on these monsters while snacking in a semi-hypnotic state. Civilization is finished when 3-D becomes the norm.
I agree with the author and I also found Bowling Alone a great book. We are becoming much more fragmented as a society and it is depressing to watch. I never see kids playing out in the street, riding their bikes, never see neighbors socializing, etc. People are much less sociable and are focused inward, almost never leaving the house. We are becoming more atomized and lonely.The trajectory is downward.
Don't forget television's huge contribution to the coarsening (and, I think, the dumbing-down) of the culture.
I run a small (but profitable and very well-reviewed) burger joint, and had hoped to do so for a number of years yet; but I am so burned out at trying to prepare and serve good food to tattooed idiots with their hats on sideways and the appearance of poop in their baggy pants who busy themselves trading epithets with their 'friends' on a cell phone while I try to take their order that I think I shall quietly move to Prague or the west coast of Ireland and quietly drink myself to death.
"(A scientist in Don DeLillo’s novnovel White Noise feels "proud to be an American" because "we still lead the world in stimuli.")"
I realize it would have distracted from the article, but "White Noise" is a fantastic/funny novel about modern life's weirdness. Well worth reading...since they never made a movie out of it.
If anyone's watched TV with the sound off and tried to concentrate on the show, you really get a sense of one of the author's points. The flipping through the shots is dizzying.
My boys are able to maintain friends, but they're not in the neighborhood. They know each other through scouts, sports, etc. We don't push the boys into activities, but their involvement neccessarily takes time away from any neighborhood friendships that could form/develop. If a parent doesn't take the time to help the child with the non-neighborhood relationships (that is, driving them to the other area to hang out/play), then the child has fewer neighborhood friends and doesn't interact with other kids unless in organized activities. Not proposing solutions - just giving you my perspective.
Personally, I rarely watch TV. The only reason we maintain cable is so the wife can watch her formulaic cop drama/medical drama. How anyone stomachs Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice is beyond me.
That said, sports on the 65" HDTV is permissable and is likely what keeps the fabric of society from fraying further (hockey, as noted, is incredibly improved by this).
While there is a lot of junk tv out there, we are also experiencing an era where arguably television has surpassed movies in depth and artistic vision. The Wire is amazing in its complexity and veracity. Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones transport you to another time or another world. I particularly love the Doctor Who renaissance which I have enjoyed and bonded with my children over.
Good tv is good tv. Bad tv is bad tv. Maybe if more people were paid a living wage they would have time, energy, and money to do something other than escape mundane reality by watching tv.
Yes, lots of trash out there, but seek out the excellent as in the BBC House of Cards Trilogy or Reilly: Ace of Spies or for fun Monarch of the Glen. Seek and ye shall find.
Call me extreme, but we have 100% outlawed television and video games in our home - too addictive, too trashy, and too time-wasting. Do you want your kids to grow up to be 30, still living in the basement, spending life glued to a screen? I have grander things in mind for our kids.
Those interested in ‘low brow’ entertainment will always be while those seeking ‘high brow’ alternatives will find them as well.
TV is just the medium but people remain people, there will always be the comic book crowd vs. the literature crowd. Those interested in the world vs. and those who could care less.
Perhaps TV is a symptom of the sloth disease. Without TV, sloth will still be with us.
The eroding knowledge base of the electorate correlates with the erosion of our education system and break down of family unit. Schools should not have any televisions (and they can increase exercise time), that would help but ultimately until society embraces marriage and marginalizes the practice of children out of wedlock, the erosion will continue TVs or not.
I for one loved Mr. Rogers and did not like Electric Company. Even as a child I found the E. Company annoying and always loved watching Mr. Rogers train going through the neighborhood. I guess that’s why E. Company ended in 77 and Mr. Rogers remained popular till its end in 2001.
The threat to freedom has not changed from the moment the first man noticed that the second one was doing something he shouldn't be doing. It is one man's deeply ingrained need to interfere in the lives of other men. This article is a good example of that passion.
The data show, the numbers demonstrate, the statistics say, blah blah blah... All of these numbers and data are an act of taking individual decisions and combining them into collective results. The problem with that is that the individual motives are lost in the details.
The article makes some points but too many assumptions. TV watching and Internet consumption are certainly not evils in themselves. There is no doubt that some parents and citizens make poor decisions but those decisions would be made regardless of the technology surrounding them. Remember when comic books and pulp novels were the threat? That could be bundled up along withe nudie magazine consumption into collective reading time. See the problem?
The true roots of conservatism in America lie with one word: liberty. Liberty requires responsibility on the part of the free and trust on the part of the community. In other words, free men trust that other free men know how much television they and their children should watch without input from the masses.
If your child spends 6 hours a day sitting in an unmade bed eating cheetos and watching MTV, the problem is not too much television watching. The problem is irresponsible parents. That problem is not remedied by scientific analysis of the symptoms and hubris about the results.
On an extended business trip, I stopped meeting with colleagues for breakfast because I couldn’t stand having a TV news channel playing while I ate breakfast. They insisted on it and though I was strange for not wanting it. They hardly spoke to one another and paid attention to the TV. What they thought they were getting out it is beyond me. It’s more pleasant and efficient to read the news – you skip the nonsense and focus on news that matters. And there’s no HEY-LOOK-AT-THIS!-WOW! sound track playing and no beautiful morons pontificating.
Much of TV news reporting is of little interest - car chase ten states away, 300 pound boy, monkey does calculus, disaster I already know about - victims are sad, talking heads talking past each other - apparently directing their comments to the lowest cognitive level of folks who already agree with them.
Ignore it? That’s not what it’s designed for – it’s designed to suck you in, and it’s good at that.
TV can be boring but simultaneously absorbing. It’s designed to grab and hold your attention – and then to grab and hold your attention, and over and over – but much of the time holding your attention on things that aren’t worth your attention. Now think about this… now think about that… now think about this… and on and on. I have my own thoughts and priorities. I don’t want a bunch of clever programmers channeling my thoughts – or my children’s thoughts.
We have a little set with built in DVD and VCR player (connected to no antenna, cable, or satellite) on which my kids watch cartoons and movies (from their stock or the library) and play playstation (they love “Call of Duty”). Internet beats TV hands down. I pay for a high speed internet connection and have a wireless LAN for our computers (one per family member). Some quality old TV shows (Star Trek) are available on line. But I spend more time with my sons in outdoor recreation, hands on project building, or reading together than watching movies or on line TV shows.
Got rid of cable TV entirely about 3 weeks ago and do not miss it. The History Channel has gone to the dogs anyway.
I do not equate the internet to television. At least the internet is interactive. All of us are engaging in conversation. Debating. That is good mental exercise. Well, it can be. Over on The Nation the comment sections often seem to have people "exercising" without any weight or tension on the Bowflex.
Rediscover Old Time Radio. If you haven't treated yourself to some circa-1959 vintage Bob and Ray or one of Jack Benny's violin solos, you have led an incomplete life.
