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Monday, September 3, 2012

The Impact of Television on Children's Brains

In this age of rapidly accelerating technology, it is important for us to consider what impact this has on our children, especially television. Television has become a big part of everyday modern life for many people. If you walk into the average 'civilized' house, you are likely to find the television placed in prime position in the main room of the house, with the furniture carefully arranged around it so that everyone can get a good view. Added to that, many homes how have televisions in the bedrooms and other areas too.  Television can be a useful source of information and entertainment for most adults, but children are not in the same stage of development as adults.

When speaking to parents about their children's television watching habits, many parents will often reassure me that they keep a close eye on the types of programs their children are allowed to watch.  They claim that many shows now are specially aimed at children, and some of them are even educational.  I would like parents to consider that it's not the 'content' of the programs their children are watching, but the act of watching itself that can be the problem.  The more the television is used to entertain a child, the more the child needs to be entertained, creating a vicious circle as their lack of imagination prevents them from initiating more enriching play.  There are plenty of studies that confirm the connection between violent behaviour and its connection to television viewing, and in addition to these findings it is very important to look at the neurological impact of television on developing brains.

Did you know that babies' brains are developing in unique ways during their first 3 years?  This is a crucial stage of brain development that is complete by age three.  For their brains to develop properly they need to move, to play, to explore, to be nurtured by and interact with people around them.  They don't get this kind of stimulation from a television, which means many are missing out on crucial brain development during this short window of time, which can never be recovered.  In fact, if you look at children while they are watching television, it can be quite disturbing indeed.  They go into a very passive state, their eyes look empty, and they become receptive to whatever messages the television is putting out.  They also have not yet developed the filters to discriminate between fantasy and reality, no matter how much an adult explains the difference, so they are very impressionable and take everything in at face value.  In fact, while watching television, people go into such a passive state that a steady flow of 'startle' flickers must be programmed into a show to keep the brain alert.  'Startles' are sudden, unexpected sounds or scenes designed to keep the brain awake and involved.  Quick changes of camera angle, unexpected or surprising sounds, sudden actions, rapid-fire scenes - all of this startles the brain enough to hold its attention and creates just enough stress to activate body preparedness for defensive action...thanks to a continuous, low-level stream of cortisol entering the viewer's bloodstream.

Cortisol is part of our body's "flight-or-fight" response, and it takes from eight to twenty-four hours for cortisol to clear the bloodstream after entry.  Advertisers often insist that a certain number of startles appear in each show segment.  It's part of their contract with the television producers.  The neurological impact this has on kids is akin to child abuse.  It impedes normal brain development, decreases intelligence, and interferes with the nervous system and emotional response patterning.  The impact on pre-borns is even greater, because of the blood-tie between the mother and her fetus.  The growing fetus can be flooded by mum's cortisol again and again.  This is why it is so important for pregnant women to live in as stress-free an environment as possible.  For a fetus, baby or young child to be subject to constant levels of cortisol in their bodies from watching television, keeps their brains in the lower 'flight-or-fight' patterning, which inhibits them from developing their higher consciousness and imagination.

By putting babies and young children in front of a television, we are literally re-wiring their brains and preventing them from reaching their potential.  The evidence of this damage doesn't become obvious until about the age of 7, when the child starts exhibiting learning difficulties, often labelled as ADHD.  Other problems include lack of empathy, desensitization to violence, unrealistic expectations of reality, limited imagination and swinging between physical lethargy and bursts of scattered energy.  Television may also blunt a commitment to language by delaying the development of the verbal areas of the brain at a crucially language-sensitive age.  Children learn to speak through imitating, listening to and conversing with real, live people.  Mechanically reproduced voices on television are no substitute for real conversation.  Of all the damage wrought by TV, impairment of internal imagery may be the most serious.  All higher forms of intelligence, such as empathy, compassion, love, as well as science, philosophy and religion are based on capacities for abstract thought and symbolic structures developed through internal image-making, which begins formation in the first year of life.  Television radically undermines the development of image-making in that it offers a verbal sound and provides the matching image.  The image is already there with the sound, leaving the higher creative levels of the brain with nothing to do.  The vast fields involved in image-making lie idle and eventually atrophy.  "Use it or lose it" is nature's dictum.  And we are losing it. TV entertains the mind, and clearly entertainment is not play.  By the nature of the neural fields involved, neither can TV educate.  But it can condition very well.  Television is a powerful, multi-sensory teacher of values.  Even under the best circumstances, it can be difficult for parents to be as persuasive.

Even if we as viewers grow blase about the barrage of image-sounds now used in both TV and movies, the ancient parts of the brain have no such discrimination.  They continue to release their shots of cortisol even as our higher self expresses indifference.  The result is that the body lives in a constant state of threat. A further by-product of constant startle is over-production of reduntant neural connections, which are thought to cause a considerable reduction in brain efficiency.  But an even more serious impairment results from keeping the brain on hyper-alert.  All living organisms threatened in their early developmental period, even plants, tend to reproduce very quickly.  It is as if an external threat is saying "Your time is short, breed!"  And this is just what the ancient mammalian brain will bring about, thus we have the trend toward premature genital sexuality.  The disappearance of childhood we have long lamented takes on vast implications, which is combined with the brain's mal-adaptions explained earlier.

The good news is infants, toddlers and children don’t need television to distract or entertain them. Humans raised children for 50,000 years before television sets, and you can do it, too. Your children can learn to entertain themselves or play with your supervision.  We humans learn best through interpersonal relationships and hands-on activity, not television.

How do we break the TV habit?  The easiest first step to reduce television viewing in your household is to move the television set/s to a less prominent location.  TV is far less tempting when it is not accessible.  Also remove TV sets from your children’s bedroom, and instead create a calming atmosphere with materials and toys to encourage more imaginative play.  Keep the TV off during dinner.  Meals are a great time for conversation.  Place clear limits on television viewing, and designate certain days of the week as TV-free days.  Don’t use TV as a reward or punishment.  This increases its power and can lead to conflict over its use.

Avoid using TV as a babysitter.  This creates a vicious cycle of dependence, and rather than giving you more time to do things, it makes your job as a parent harder in the long run as you end up with a child unable to concentrate or entertain themselves. Involve children in household activities and meal preparation.  The task might take a little longer, but the teamwork and interaction are worth it.  Turn regular household activities into a game.  Give them an opportunity to help out.  Don’t let the TV displace what’s important: family conversation, exercise, play, reading, creating, thinking and doing.  Consider living without television.  We ditched our TV before our first child was born and have a much more fulfilling quality of life now.  We still watch the occasional DVD on our computer, but our household is much more peaceful and fulfilling than it could ever be if we still had the insidious electronic box lurking in the corner.  Remember that the more energy you invest in quality interaction with your children now, it will be repaid a thousandfold as they mature.  By sticking your children in front of the television, not only are you losing your connection and influence with them, but they are being subject to the damage explained above.

Offer more attractive activities for your children so they don’t feel deprived without their television.  Do some baking together, go outside and plant some seedlings with them and care for them as they grow.  Even if the weather is raining, put on your gumboots and raincoat, take your umbrella and go for a splashy rainy walk.  My children love this, and so do I.  It is so much fun!  After all, it’s only water.  And when you get home you can take off any wet clothes and have a nice warm bath.  Go to a national park or beach for a few hours.  Make a kite together and take it for a fly.  Read some books. Tell some stories.  Make some simple sock puppets as characters for a play.  Play ‘I-spy’, and depending on the age of the children you might want to use colours as the clue.  Do some crafts, with some paper and glue make a special card for grandma and grandpa and then go to the post office and post it.  Build a tent in the loungeroom from blankets hung over chairs.  It really is amazing the amount of activities that you will begin to imagine as fulfilling alternatives to the box.  And the interesting thing is, the more activities you do, the more your imagination will be fired up to think of more, and life gets even more fun!  Connecting with your children in this way not only deepens your bond with them which is invaluable in itself, it also nurtures their imagination, encouraging them to develop into the brilliant, ingenious and creative beings they truly are.

Alice Fisher © 2007
References:
Beyond the Indigo Children – P.M.H. Attwater, L.H.D.
Who’s Bringing Them Up? – Martin Large
The Plug-in Drug – Winn, M
Endangered Minds – Healey, J
You Are Your Child’s First Teacher – Rahima Baldwin Dancy
The Genius of Play – Sally Jenkinson

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