[thenerdhead]

If this study has you scratching your head about the impact of digital media, do have a read of "Four arguments for the elimination of television" by Jerry Mander.

The arguments included in it are no different than many of these new studies coming out. If you grew up to be a latchkey kid and had your fair share of TV/video games/etc, it might give you perspective into things you never thought about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3NBEurnIqY

[erikpukinskis]

Interesting perspective.

One of the things he mentions is that TV is passive, and puts you in an alpha state where your brain stops trying to respond because there’s no point in responding.

My partner and I do watch a few hours of TV every night now. But we don’t do this “alpha” thing, at least not exclusively. We pause frequently to comment on or joke about what we’re seeing. To the point that I think sometimes a 30 minute show will take us an hour to get through.

The way it works is one of holds the remote and pauses whenever they want to, and if the other wants to pause they just say “pause!”

I wonder how that changes Mander’s analysis. For us it make TV a pretty fun interactive experience.

And this way of watching was largely impossible when Mander did his work, because you simply couldn’t pause TV. Although you could pause a VCR or DVD.

I’m curious how widespread pausing is. I certainly feel that even solo TV watching is a more interactive experience than TV watching was when I was a kid. Alone, I’ll pause to Wikipedia things or to go find related media.

[thenerdhead]

Thanks for sharing. I'm sure there's plenty of counter-arguments to his, but the only thing I have to work with is my anecdote/experiences.

Ridding myself of TV over the last 2 years has been extremely hard. I'm down to watching a maximum of an hour a night. Most times I don't even try nor care to. I have seen significant improvements to my own life, but most importantly I see the effects it has had on my young kids and how much more creative they are because they aren't sitting in front of a TV watching shows like I was when I was their age. It was the only thing I knew as a parent taught by mine and I had to challenge that for myself.

Moderation is the key to everything, but this book woke me up to things I wasn't aware of and figured I'd share.

[npteljes]

I had to look this up on Wikipedia:

"A latchkey kid, or latchkey child, is a child who returns to an empty home after school or a child who is often left at home with no supervision because their parents are away at work."