Plato’s Cave

On the 6th September 2007 the British Prime Minister asked Dr. Tanya Bryon to:

conduct an independent review looking at the risks to children from exposure to potentially harmful or inappropriate material on the internet and in video games.

With the pages headed ‘Byron Review – Children and New Technology’ I had hopes that Doctor Byron might widen her remit and examin the unreformable medium as well as the reformable media.
Dr. Bryon states in her forward:

Hardly a day goes by without a news report about children being brutalised and abused in the real world or its virtual counterpart. Some make links between whathappens online or in a game, and what happens on the streets or at home.

True enough.

These headlines have contributed to the climate of anxiety that surrounds new technology and created a fiercely polarised debate in which panic and fear often drown out evidence.

True again. Unfortunately Dr. Byron fails to looking into which media is polarising this debate. For if she did she would be faced with fierce media concentration on one side, and a wealth of achedemic evidence on the other. As adequate highlighted in Dr. Aric Sigman’s ‘Remotely Controlled’ :

Just the arrival of television in a country or a community seems to be followed by an enormous surge in the rates of violence. A little-publicised major study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has looked at the prevalence of murder, rape and grievous bodily harm, as they would any other disease such as AIDS or Sars that harm a population. It found that following the introduction of television in both the United States and Canada murder rates doubled, and concluded: ‘If, hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults. Violent crime would be half of what it is.’ Across the United States, as different regions got their first television sets, there was a 10- to 15-year delay before violent crime suddenly escalated to double what it had been. The same was true in Canada. And five years on when televisions saturated the households of America’s less well-off ethnic minorities, the murder rates doubled there too. England and Wales were not immune either. About 15 years after television sets became the norm, murder rates doubled. This 10- to 15-year incubation period between the time television is introduced and when the rates of violence double is believed to be the period when the first television generation ‘comes of age’.

What is equally surprising to me is that when the author of the study reported these findings at a press conference of the American Medical Association, referring to this television-related violence as an ‘epidemic’, there was apparently not a single mention of him in the press the next day. The researcher’s prescription was uncompromising: Take the TV sets out of children’s bedrooms. It’s just parental abdication to let them have televisions of their own.’ Yet again, this has fallen on deaf ears. While a single copycat video game-related murder makes the news, this much bigger finding is entirely unknown by most well-informed people When you consider the headlines given to other health issues such as the contra-ceptive pill, AIDS or MMR, one becomes suspicious as to why this type of study doesn’t have similar prominence. Many people and broadcasters simply don’t want to hear or don’t believe the magnitude of this finding. And many newspapers and magazines are owned by or own the same television corporations who have good reason not to publicise negative studies about television. In fact, one study on this very conflict of interest says that ‘although the scientific evidence linking television and violence has grown considerably stronger over the past three decades, recent news reports imply that the scientific evidence is weaker than did earlier reports’.

A debate which she can not win.

Her Executive Summary highlights the following:

In relation to the internet we need a shared culture of responsibility with families, industry, government and others in the public and third sectors all playing their part to reduce the availability of potentially harmful material, restrict access to it by children and to increase children’s resilience.

It seems to have bypassed Dr. Bryon altogether that the removal of the medium would negate the need to ‘toughen up one’s child’ at all. What of those that don’t want a tough child? What of those that want a kind loving and care-free child ready to explore the wonder of life and the world?

Under Key Arguments and Recommendations she says:

There are also concerns about excessive use of these technologies by children at the expense of other activities and family interaction.

A good point unfortunatly unexplored or expanded upon.

The voices of children, young people and parents and the evidence of harm in relation to the internet and video games are discussed in detail… Overall I have found that a search for direct cause and effect in this area is often too simplistic.

Finishing with:

We need to take into account children’s individual strengths and vulnerabilities, because the factors that can discriminate a ‘beneficial’ from a ‘harmful’ experience online and in video games will often be individual factors in the child. The very same content can be useful to a child at a certain point in their life and development and may be equally damaging to another child.

Where Dr. Byron decides to take cover behind the well established scientific rock of ‘a balenced view’ with the rest of her job-protecting fraternity. Leaving the debate open for others more courageous to join the dots.

The report continues to recommend ‘awareness campaigns’, ‘e-safety’, ‘media literacy’ and ‘parent training’. Which is akin to getting an AIDS patient to live with his condition instead of curing it.

From here Dr. Bryon goes on to discuss video games.

The evidence on video games is discussed in Chapter 6. There are some possible negative effects of violent content in games, but these only become ‘harmful’ when children present other risk factors:

• There is some evidence of short term aggression from playing violent video games but no studies of whether this leads to long term effects.

• There is a correlation between playing violent games and aggressive behaviour, but this is not evidence that one causes the other.

I don’t know about you but if some one states that ‘There is a correlation’ and then states in the same sentence ‘but this is not evidence’ THAT is a contradiction. Dr. Sigman helps to clarify in this regard.

It’s true to say that there is a tradition that blames most new forms of media for society’s ills. Every popular art form – the novel, the circus, Punch and Judy shows, comic strips, movies and rock’n’ roll has been singled out for blame upon arrival. ‘One generation’s trash is the next generation’s art form,’ says Richard Rhodes, author of Why They Kill But just because those media were held accountable doesn’t mean that some of those accusations weren’t actually true. In 1950s London, teenagers for the first time tore up the cinema seats when Bill Haley and the Comets performed American rock’s’ roll. And certain black-and-white movies may well have caused antisocial behaviour. But that is an issue to do with the content of the medium. Television cannot be compared with any form of media that has come before. The sheer amount of time we watch, the biological effects of the new television technology and the nature of the things we see in such high concentration are unprecedented and incomparable to our previous use of novels, comic books and 78 rpm singles with a photo of Elvis on the sleeve.

That is the entire point. Television is qualitatively different to a book, a record or a comic strip.

…

Scientists have also looked at the number of hours people watch per day to see if this is related to violence. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Johnson and his colleagues have found that there is a powerful relationship, and the effect of television is not limited to violent programmes. Just an hour a day of any type of television programming watched by teenagers made a significant difference in how violent they ultimately became as adults. It seems that younger brains and minds in development are not merely influenced by what they do see on television – they are influenced by what they’re not doing. For example, unlike reading, television does not provide the cognitive stimulation that produces brain devel-opment and the intellectual and emotional benefits that arise from this (*). It is this seemingly benign factor that has been consistently overlooked.

Johnson tracked 707 families in upstate New York for 17 years, starring in 1975. When the children reached the age of between 22 to 24 years, the researchers correlated the number of hours of television they had viewed at the age of 14 with police and FBI records of violence and interviews. In 2002, Johnson published his findings in Science, reporting that children who watched one to three hours of television each day when they were 14 to 16 years old were 60 per cent more likely to be involved in assaults and fights as adults than those who watched less television. And those who watched three hours (less than the national average!) or more a day were five times more likely to behave violently and aggressively as adults. Remember, four hours per day is absolutely normal in most Western countries. In fact this is far less than the average teenager watches, especially if you include videos, DVDs and computer games. The study preempted and essentially dismissed the usual criticism that ‘These results have nothing to do with television – it has to do with lifestyle. People who watch more than three hours of television are different to those who watch less than an how:’ The effects of parental neglect, poverty, dangerous neigh-bourhoods, a history of psychiatric disorder and other independent risk factors for aggression were statistically eliminated. And the increase in aggression and violence asso-ciated with television viewing held true both for children who had previously displayed violent tendencies and those who had not shown earlier aggression.

Dr. Byron continues:

33.     However, we need to approach unequivocal claims of direct causes with caution – there is a strong body of ethnographic research which argues that context and the characteristics of each child will mediate the effects of playing video games. This means considering the media effects evidence in light of what we know about child development. We can use this to hypothesise about potential risks to children from playing some games, for example:

• Arousal brought on by some games can generate stress-like symptoms in children.

• Games are more likely to affect perceptions and expectations of the real world amongst younger children because of their less developed ability to distinguish between fact and fiction (due to the immaturity of the frontal cortex).

• The interactive nature of games may also have a more profound effect than some other media, again especially amongst younger children (e.g. up to around 12 years old) who tend to use narratives to develop their values and ideas and who learn through ‘doing’.

The simple statement that each child’s context and characteristics mediate their use of video games is meant purely to beg the question ‘How are we to protect them from the media [that is video games] if all children are different?’

34.     There are new risks presented in online gaming, many of which are similar to the potential risks to children of other internet use. These games offer new opportunities for social interaction between children and there are a number of potential benefits for children and young people from playing video games, including cognitive and educational gains and simply having fun. Interestingly the evidence to prove these benefits can be as contested as the evidence of negative effects.

There are no cognitive and education gains to be had from staring at a screen perfectly still (see above *). In her final sentence we once again we find Dr. Byron hiding behind sciences well established ‘balanced view’ screen. Again recommendations are made with words like ‘increase understanding’, ‘work together’, and the all but useless ‘classification system’. And just to quell and reservations parents my have…

Alongside this work I am also clear that we need to ensure we get the most out of video games for children’s learning and development, building on research into educational benefits. To this end I also recommend that:

• Government supports a dialogue between the games industry and the education sector to identify opportunities for the benefits of game-based learning to be evaluated in educational environments.

Don’t worry, games can be educational.

Further in the report the following statements can be found:

Very few people are genuinely addicted to video games but lots of time spent playing can result in missed opportunities for other forms of development and socialisation. – p.11

The majority of concerns raised about the risks to children and young people from video games centre primarily on two areas: content, especially violent material, and excessive use – p.17

Excessive use of video games was raised so strongly by respondents to my Call for Evidence, including by children and parents themselves, that I have looked at the research in this area to explore the findings about ‘addiction’ to video games (see Chapter 6). These concerns about the nature of children’s ‘media diet’ are a central issue for parents and will be a key part of their motivation for managing their children’s use of new technology. I recognise and support this – a balanced ‘media diet’ and range of play and other activities are important for development – but I also think we need to support parents to go beyond these concerns to think about and address wider issues of their children’s safety online andin gaming. – p.17

Video games are among the most popular leisure pursuits of children and young people. – p.19

While Dr. Byron states that a limited number of people are addicted to video games she also highlights the fact that is it one of the leading leisure pursuits among children. And even though it was ‘raised strongly’ by her ‘call for evidence’ she see no reason to examine it further. This is again highlighted in the following passage:

During the course of this review I have been struck by the degree of concern about risks to children from their use of the internet and video games. There is evidence to support many of the concerns that parents and others raise which is discussed in detail later in this report. But there are also two other key factors at play: a generational digital divide between parents and children and an ongoing debate in society and the research community about the effects of the media on society.

I am currently on page 22 of the 226 page final report. I do not hold out any hope that Dr. Byron has any genuine recommendations to remove the screen from our childrens lives or society.

source

While much of the literature I read focuses on the the scientific and quantifiable outcomes of watching Television, Jerry Mander in his book ‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television’ (p.89/90/91) used a little known Russian film to help illustrate the current disconnected state of man (no doubt aided by television)

A widely misunderstood Soviet film, Solaris, directed by Andre Tarkovski from the book by Stanislaw Lem, depicts problems faced by some astronauts in a space station that is orbiting the planet Solaris in a faraway galaxy.
Of an original group of eighty-five astronauts, only two are left. Most have fled, others have gone mad and been shipped back to Earth. Several have killed themselves.
The surface of Solaris is one vast ocean, which is also a single living mind. This planet-ocean-mind is playing some kind of awful mental trick on its visitors.
Back on Earth, puzzled space officials send a psychologist, Kris Kelvin, to investigate. Before leaving the planet for outer space, Kelvin spends his final weeks visiting his father in a small house deep in some woods. He immerses himself in the forest and takes long, silent walks through meadows. The film moves exceedingly slowly at this point. There are long sequences in which nothing but natural events of the forest pass by the camera lens. Nature-time.
Sometimes the camera follows Kelvin’s eyes as they absorb the surroundings. It rains. He is soaked. Back at his cabin, his body is warmed by a fire.
Finally it is time to leave. Now the camera is in the front seat of the car, sitting where Kelvin is sitting. We see what he sees.
Slowly the terrain changes. Winding wooded roads give way to straight, one-lane roads. The foliage recedes from the highway. Then we are on a freeway. The environment has become speeding cars, overpasses, underpasses, tunnels. Soon, we are in a city. There is noise, light, buildings everywhere. The natural landscape is submerged, invisible. Homocentric landscapes, abstract reality prevail. From there it’s a fast cut to space.
Kelvin is alone in a small space vehicle, heading toward Solaris. Earth is gone. His roots have been abandoned. Grounding, by definition, is impossible. His whole environment is abstract. His planetary home now exists only in memory.
Arriving at the space station, Kelvin understands Solaris’ trick. It enters visitors’ memories and then creates real-life manifestations of them. This begins to happen to Kelvin. His long-dead wife appears in his room. At first he believes it is an image of her; then he realizes it is not just an image, it is actually she. And yet, they are both aware that she is only a manifestation of his mind. So she is simultaneously real and imaginary.
Other people from Kelvin’s life appear in the lab. He encounters the re-created memories of the other two astronauts; relatives, old friends, toys, scraps of long-abandoned clothing, technical equipment, potted plants, dogs, dwarfs from a childhood circus, fields of grass. Things are strewn wildly about as the visitors from Earth try to figure out what to do with all the real/unreal stuff that keeps appearing from their memories. The space station takes on the quality of a dream, a carnival, a lunatic asylum.
The scientists consider returning to Earth as the others have. Kelvin favors this move as he feels his sanity slipping, yet he realizes that to leave means “killing” his rediscovered wife. Back on Earth she will be a memory, much as Earth has become in this space station. She understands this, and it is a source of anguish for both of them.
No one among the scientists or their mental creations can control what will happen. Without concrete reality, which is to say, contact with their planetary roots, they are adrift in their minds: insane. All information has become believable and not believable at the same time. It has become arbitrary. There is no way to separate the real from the not-real. Although the astronauts know this, since there is nothing that is not arbitrary, except each other, all information is equal. It is impossible to determine which information to act on.
Solaris has made the astronauts its subjects. They cannot defend themselves from the images the planet makes concrete. In the end, the men have no choice but to accept all information as real. Kelvin goes through a long cycle of Earth images, from childhood to his present space-station life. He is in his father’s house again, but he is also in space. It rains again, but now the rain is indoors. It might as well be. He cannot distinguish. He accepts.
Finally, the message of the film is clear. The process of going insane began long before the launch into space. It began when life moved from nature into cities. Kelvin’s ride from woods to city to space was a ride from connection to disconnection, from reality to abstraction, a history of technology, setting the conditions for the imposition of reconstructed realities by a single powerful force.

Mander helps us understand how the man-made dominates the natural and later expands (p.111/2):

Like the machine of Tausk’s suffering patients, television is a final manifestation of an already apparent confusion. This confusion existed at the time Tausk was writing, but it has now been institutionalized by the ubiquitousness of the artificial environments we live in. A real world which cannot be questioned has been submerged beneath a reconstructed, human-created world. We live inside the manifestations of human minds. Like the child seeking outside connection, we find only the projections of other humans. We can’t know the natural from the artificial, since the processes that would reveal that are nowhere visible.

And so as we immerse or selves in the manifestations of other peoples minds our roots are abandoned. Grounding, by definition, is impossible. Our whole environment becomes abstract. And the Real becomes only memory. As Kistin M. Barton points out in her book (p.42):

As stated above, Gerbner (1986) noted that consumers are exposed to television’s messages throughout our entire lives. Once viewers have been cultivated to accept the reality portrayed on television, subsequent television viewing serves to reinforce what the viewer already believes. This constant reinforcement serves to foster stronger beliefs in the messages television presents, even in the face of real world statistics and evidence to the contrary.

And (p.43):

Television is the dominant force in terms of cultural influence in today’s society. To put it bluntly, as Gerbner and Gross (1976) wrote, “Television is the central cultural arm of American society” (p. 175). Where parents, religion, educators, friends, and authority figures were once the disseminators of information pertaining to the social world around us, television has usurped that position and become the dominant force for almost everyone.

Maybe now you understand why your teenagers stuff is ’strewn wildly about’ as they try to ‘figure out what to do with’ the reality we have created for them.

Mander finishes:

We are cut off, floating in space, living within a nationwide sense-deprivation tank. We see a stimulus, a light, and we cling to it. It becomes everything. It causes images in our brain. We call this experience, but we can’t tell if it is our experience or something else. It is in our heads, but we didn’t create it. We don’t know if it is real or it isn’t. We can’t stop the broadcasts. We accept whatever comes. One vision is equal to the next. One thought is as good as the next. All information merges. All experience merges. We take everything on faith. One explanation is the same as the next one. Contradictions do not exist. We have lost control of our minds. We are all lost in space. Our world exists only in memory. Everything is arbitrary. TV is the guru speaking reality. We have merged with the influencing machine. We are the Solaris astronauts.

I recently watched ‘Network (1976)’ again and my admiration for it re-blossomed. The speeches made by Howard ring as true today as they ever did

Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems –

and woe is us if it ever falls in the hands of the wrong people. And that’s why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this network is now in the hands of CC and A the Communications Corporation of America. We’ve got a new Chairman of the Board, a man named Frank Hackett now sitting in Mr. Ruddy’s office on the twentieth floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this tube?

So, listen to me! Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamned amusement park, that’s what television is! Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats and story-tellers, singers and dancers, jugglers, side-show freaks, liontamers and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business! If you want truth, go to God, go to your guru, go to yourself because that’s the only place you’ll ever find any real truth! But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell! We’ll tell you Kojack always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker’s house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don’t worry: just look at your watch — at the end of the hour, he’s going to win.

Howard Beal explains his rage

We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear! We deal in illusion, man! None of it’s true! But you people sit there — all of you — day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds — we’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe this illusion we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal.

You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing! We’re the illusions! So turn off this goddam set! Turn it off right now! Turn it off and leave it off. Turn it off right now, right in the middle of this very sentence I’m speaking now –

And who can forget:

We are in a lot of trouble, because you people and millions of others do not read books, because a lot of you do not read newspapers, because the only truth you know is what you get on the tube! Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that did not come out of this tube, this tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation, this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime minister, this tube is the most awesome god damn force in the whole godless world, and where were us if it falls in the hands of the wrong people and when the largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole world who knows what shit will be played over truth on this goddamn network!

So you listen to me, television is NOT the truth, television is a goddamn AMUSEMENT Park, television is a circus, a carnival, a group of acrobats, story tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side show freaks, lion tamers, and football players! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages and colors, Tube is all u know! Your beginning to believe the illusions spinning on the tube, you beginning to think the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal, you do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like a tube, dress your kids like the tube, you eat what the tube tells you to eat, you even think like the tube!! This is mass madness u maniacs! In gods name…We are the real thing! We are the illusion!!!

Howard talking to camera

The last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious, informed public capable of critical thinking. They seek to keep us distracted and in a naive bubble!
I don’t have to tell you things are bad, everybody knows things are bad! The dollar buys a nickels worth, banks are going bust, shop keepers keep guns under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets and there’s no one anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breath and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our T.V’s while some local newscaster tells us today that we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if thats the way its suppose to be, we know things are bad.. worse then bad – they are crazy, its like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore, we sit in the house and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller and all we say is please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms, let me have my toaster, my T.V. and radio, and I won’t say anything, just leave us alone — Well I’m not going to leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest, I don’t want you to rod, I don’t want you to write to your congress man because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation, the government and the crime in the streets! All i know is FIRST -YOU’VE GOT TO GET MAD!!! YOU HAVE GOT TO SAY-I AM A HUMAN BEING GOD DAMN IT — MY LIFE HAS VALUE!!!!

Howard pleads to the nation to stop the madness

Wes Moore’s article on familyresources.com focuses on the chemical imbalances that television induces.

He brings up something I didn’t know that Krugman’s research proved:

When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. In fact, experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that while viewers are watching television, the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left, a neurological anomaly.

He makes a surprising revelation about endorphins:

The crossover from left to right releases a surge of the body’s natural opiates: endorphins, which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles, strenuous exercise, and orgasm. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.

Experiments conducted to show what effects withdraw would have concluded:

None could resist the urge longer than six months, and over time all of the participants showed the symptoms of opiate withdrawal: increased anxiety, frustration, and depression.

This is probably due to the fact that:

A person obsessed with the pursuit of physical pleasure is probably fixated on this circuit; in fact the Freudians believed an opium addiction was an attempt to return to the womb. We could logically deduce that such addictions occur when higher brain functions are anesthetized and the newly dominant lower brain seeks out pleasure at any cost. Taking this into account, television is like a double edged sword: not only does it cause the endocrine system to release the body’s natural opiates (endorphins), but it also concentrates neurological activity in the lower brain regions where we are motivated by nothing but the pursuit of pleasure. Television produces highly functional, mobile “bio-survival robots.”

It’s not surprising when he deduces that:

The evidence is conclusive: all opioids are addictive! Even the ones your body produces naturally. The television set works as a high-tech drug delivery system

He also states that while we are in this state:

The right brain processes information in wholes, leading to emotional rather than intelligent responses. We cannot rationally attend to the content presented on television because that part of our brain is not in operation.

and…

As yet there is no explanation as to why we switch to the right brain while viewing television, but we do know this phenomenon is immune to content.

Not surprisingly he concludes that…

Television, however, is a drug that is actually essential to maintaining the social infrastructure.

and that…

Mulholland’s research implies that watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall.

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While conducting my research, one of that saddest articles I have come across is that highlighting the introduction of television into the gentle buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, recorded by the Guardian (’03):

Four years ago, Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan’s first crime wave – murder, fraud, drug offences.

The article mentions Bhutan’s unique history:

A refugee monk from Tibet, the Shabdrung, created this tiny country in 1616 as a bey-yul, or Buddhist sanctuary, a refuge from the ills of the world. So successful were he and his descendants at isolating themselves that by the 1930s virtually all that was known of Bhutan in the west was James Hilton’s novel, Lost Horizon. He called it Shangri-la, a secret Himalayan valley, whose people never grew old and lived by principles laid down by their high lama: “Here we shall stay with our books and our music and our meditations, conserving the frail elegancies of a dying age.”

And starts:

April 2002 was a turbulent month for the people of Bhutan. One of the remotest nations in the world, perched high in the snowlines of the Himalayas, suffered a crime wave. The 700,000 inhabitants of a kingdom that calls itself the Land of the Thunder Dragon had never experienced serious law-breaking before. Yet now there were reports from many towns and villages of fraud, violence and even murder.

While it was good to see that the Bhutanese had not lost touch with intuitive judgment:

Why was this kingdom with its head in the clouds falling victim to the kind of crime associated with urban life in America and Europe? For the Bhutanese, the only explanation seemed to be five large satellite dishes, planted in a vegetable patch, ringed by sugar-pink cosmos flowers on the outskirts of Thimphu.

The Bhutanese seemed to understood what they were losing by introducing TV into their kingdom:

Four years on, those same subscribers are beginning to accuse television of smothering their unique culture, of promoting a world that is incompatible with their own, and of threatening to destroy an idyll where time has stood still for half a millennium.

And very quickly social patterns attributed to the west start the manifest

Since the April 2002 crime wave, the national newspaper, Kuensel, has called for the censoring of television (some have even suggested that foreign broadcasters, such as Star TV, be banned altogether). An editorial warns: “We are seeing for the first time broken families, school dropouts and other negative youth crimes. We are beginning to see crime associated with drug users all over the world – shoplifting, burglary and violence.”

What is sad is that the negative social behavior in the west is constantly attributed to social-economic backgrounds while in Bhutan it can be clearly linked to the introduction of the medium of television, and the letters pages of Kuensel are testament to this:

Every week, the letters page carries columns of worried correspondence: “Dear Editor, TV is very bad for our country… it controls our minds… and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent.”

The article limply asks:

And for those of us sitting on the couch in the west, how the kingdom is affected by TV may well help to find an answer to the question that has evaded us: have we become the product of what we watch?

…after what the journalist have seen, a logical conclusion should be easy.

The foreign minister sadly noted:

His Excellency Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan’s foreign minister [..] “we were determined not to become pawns on a chessboard and decided not to have formal relations with the superpowers. We also sensed the regret of many nations across the world at what they had lost in terms of values and culture.“

The king had hope in the people and their ability to not let the medium dominate their lives:

The year after France beat Brazil 3-0 in the World Cup final, the people of Thimphu gathered once again in Changlimithang stadium, this time to celebrate the Dragon King’s silver jubilee. On June 2 1999, he stood before them to announce that now they could watch TV whenever they wanted. “But not everything you will see will be good,” he warned. “It is my sincere hope that the introduction of television will be beneficial to our people and country.”

And BBS [Bhutan Broadcasting Service] glefully recorded:

News footage from the first BBS broadcast of June 2 1999, records the cheer that resounded around Changlimithang. Bhutan’s spiritual and cultural leaders were all agreed that TV could only increase the country’s Gross National Happiness

But the person heading up Bhutan’s only cable company was a little more down to earth:

Rinzy Dorje, Sigma Cable’s chief executive [...] Between calls on his new mobile telephone, he defends cable TV: “Look, Bhutan couldn’t hold back any longer – we can’t pretend we’re still a medieval, hermit nation. When the government finally got around to announcing cable TV, I was ready, that’s all. All the information you need to know on cable technology is on the net. I got prices and sourced the parts in Delhi and Taiwan. And cable came to Bhutan. It’s no big deal.”

[...] Have Bhutan’s values been corroded by TV? “We are entitled to watch what we want, when we want, if we want. And we are quite capable of weeding out the rubbish; turning off the crap,” he retorts.

And it’s sad to see the Bhutan government’s ignorance in regards to media control:

It takes three days to pin down Leki Dorji [...] He readily admits that, in its haste to introduce TV, the government failed to prepare legislation. There is no film classification board or TV watershed in force here, no regulations about media ownership. Companies such as Star TV are free to broadcast whatever they want.

And shear belief in the will of their people:

“Yes, we are seeing some different types of crime, but that just reflects the fact that our society is changing in many ways. A culture as rich and sophisticated as ours can survive trash on TV and people are quite capable of turning off the rubbish.”

Sadly as is the case in most countries, it is up to independent bodies to monitor the impact:

While the government delays, an independent group of Bhutanese academics has carried out its own impact study and found that cable television has caused “dramatic changes” to society, being responsible for increasing crime, corruption, an uncontrolled desire for western products, and changing attitudes to love and relationships. Dorji Penjore, one of the researchers involved in the study, says: “Even my children are changing. They are fighting in the playground, imitating techniques they see on World Wrestling Federation. Some have already been injured, as they do not understand that what they see is not real.

That becomes all to aperent to the traditional Bhutanese press:

Kinley Dorji, editor of Kuensel  [..] a member of the taskforce charged with drafting the kingdom’s first media act, believes Bhutanese society is in danger of being polarised by TV. “My generation, the ministers, lamas and headteachers, have our grounding in old Bhutan and can apply ancient culture to this new phenomenon. But the ordinary people, the villagers, are confused about whether they should be ancient or modern, and the younger generation don’t really care. They jettison traditional culture for whatever they are sold on TV. Go and see real Bhutan, see how the people are affected.”

It’s sad to see…

Sangay Ngedup is one of the only government ministers willing to voice concerns about television. [...] For the first time, he says, children are confiding in their teachers of feeling manic, envious and stressed.

And it’s easy to see why:

What do you like about TV, we ask the class. “Posh and Becks, Eminem, Linkin Park. We love The Rock,” they chorus. “Aliens. Homer Simpson.” No mention of BBS.

The impact of the introduction of television can be seen in the figures:

Bhutan’s isolation has made the impact of television all the clearer, even if the government chooses to ignore it. Consider the results of the unofficial impact study. One third of girls now want to look more American (whiter skin, blond hair). A similar proportion have new approaches to relationships (boyfriends not husbands, sex not marriage). More than 35% of parents prefer to watch TV than talk to their children. Almost 50% of the children watch for up to 12 hours a day. Is this how we came to live in our Big Brother society, mesmerised by the fate of minor celebrities fighting in the jungle?

But instead of commendation and questioning change, the article in the ends:

Everyone is as yet too polite to say it, but, like all of us, the Dragon King underestimated the power of TV, perceiving it as a benign and controllable force, allowing it free rein, believing that his kingdom’s culture was strong enough to resist its messages. But television is a portal, and in Bhutan it is systematically replacing one culture with another, skewing the notion of Gross National Happiness, persuading a nation of novice Buddhist consumers to become preoccupied with themselves, rather than searching for their self.

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One of the best articles I have read on the effect of television is Lawrence Kelemen’s ‘What They Don’t Want You To Know About Television and Videos‘. The article is an abridged chapter from the book ‘To Kindle a Soul‘. What make the article good is it’s extensive use of referencing. Unfortunately the referencing is not completed at the bottom of the page, I guess you’ll have to buy the book for that.

While the article covers many aspect of television such as: content, alcohol, violence, commercialism,  cognitive damage, social interaction, obesity, & ADD. Because this bolg focuses on the scientific effects of television, I looked solely at the chapter entitled ‘Medium’.

While the article focuses on listing many of the studies that have been done by governments and academia alike, there are interesting areas concerning retardation:

One year later, Drs. Larry Gross and Michael Morgan, professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications, made headlines when they found that television did not just impair academic achievement, it retarded intelligence. They discovered that the more television tenth graders watched, the lower they scored on IQ tests. The inverse relationship between IQ and television watching held even after the researchers controlled for socio-economic status, sex, and family size. The drop in IQ scores was large and consistent, and it could not be attributed to television attracting an abundance of children from lower socio-economic groups or crowded families. “It is extremely unlikely that the association between viewing and [low] IQ scores is spurious,” they concluded.

It’s impact on education:

Although data trickled in throughout the late 1970s, the dam finally burst in 1980 when the California State Board of Education became interested in the television question and decided to launch a thorough investigation. That spring it distributed a comprehensive questionnaire to more than half a million sixth and twelfth graders, evaluating writing, reading, and arithmetic skills, work habits, family profiles, and television viewing patterns. The astonishing results caught the attention not only of research psychologists, but also (for the first time since television research began) the popular press. The New York Times reported:

A California survey indicates that the more a student watches television, the worse he does in school. Wilson Riles, California schools superintendent, said Thursday that no matter how much homework the students did, how intelligent they were, or how much money their parents earned, the relationship between television and test scores was practically identical. Based on the survey, Mr. Riles concluded that, for educational purposes, television “is not an asset and it ought to be turned off.”

social healing after abstinence:

In a spontaneous experiment in 1982, a New Jersey elementary school announced a “No TV Week.” According to the New York Times report of the event, “Students in every class started spending more time reading books and talking to their friends and families.” Two years later the entire city of Farmington, Connecticut voluntarily gave up TV for one month. When Wall Street Journal reporters interviewed Farmington residents, both adults and children most often mentioned reading as the activity they used to fill the newly available hours.

the effects on new born babies:

A fifth explanation emerged from the work of Harvard University Professor T. Berry Brazelton. Brazelton hooked newborn babies up to electroencephalographs and then exposed them to a flickering light source similar to a television but with no images. Fifteen minutes into their exposure, the babies stopped crying and produced sleep patterns on the EEG, even though their eyes were still open and observing the light. Brazelton’s experiment revealed that the medium itself, with no content, acts directly on the brain to suppress mental activity. The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry confirmed Brazelton’s finding in 1982. They reported that the brain waves generated while watching even the most exciting shows were those of low attention states. The researchers found that while subjects viewed television, “output of alpha rhythms increased, indicating they were in a passive state, as if they were just sitting in the dark.”

And is social impact:

Parents sometimes justify television’s presence in their household by arguing that it creates a venue for “family time” — that is, everyone comes together to watch television “as a family.” Eleanor Maccoby, professor emerita of psychology at Stanford University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, investigated this theory and concluded:

“It appears that the increased family contact brought about by television is not social except in the most limited sense: that of being in the same room with other people…the viewing atmosphere in most households is one of quiet absorption in the programs on the part of the family members who are present. The nature of the family social life during a program could be described as “parallel” rather than interactive, and the set does seem quite clearly to dominate family life when it is on.”

This only partially covers the article. I would advise all those interested to read it in full.

source

While disinfo.com is well know in underground circles for it’s array of published titles and video’s, a dig through it’s archives reveals a great little article by Wes Moore called “Television: Opiate of the Masses”

Backing up Krugman’s research he states:

When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. In fact, experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that while viewers are watching television, the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left, a neurological anomaly.

He also cites the lesser known fact about Television’s relation to endorphins:

The crossover from left to right releases a surge of the body’s natural opiates: endorphins, which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles, strenuous exercise, and orgasm. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.

Which he quite rightly states:

The evidence is conclusive: all opioids are addictive! Even the ones your body produces naturally. The television set works as a high-tech drug delivery system

Further down he also shows the feedback loop that we go into when we watch television, kind of controdicting Robert Nozick’s famous Experience Machine thought experiment:

First of all, when you’re watching television the higher brain regions (like the midbrain and the neo-cortex) are shut down, and most activity shifts to the lower brain regions (like the limbic system). The neurological processes that take place in these regions cannot accurately be called “cognitive.” The lower or reptile brain simply stands poised to react to the environment using deeply embedded “fight or flight” response programs. Moreover, these lower brain regions cannot distinguish reality from fabricated images (a job performed by the neo-cortex), so they react to television content as though it were real, releasing appropriate hormones and so on. Studies have proven that, in the long run, too much activity in the lower brain leads to atrophy in the higher brain regions.

It is interesting to note that the lower/reptile/limbic brain correlates to the bio-survival circuit of the Leary/Wilson 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness. This is our primal circuit, the base “presence” that we normally associate with consciousness. This is the circuit where we receive our first neurological imprint (the oral imprint), which conditions us to advance toward anything warm, pleasurable and/or protective in the environment. The bio-survival circuit is our most infantile, our most primal way of dealing with reality.

A person obsessed with the pursuit of physical pleasure is probably fixated on this circuit; in fact the Freudians believed an opium addiction was an attempt to return to the womb. We could logically deduce that such addictions occur when higher brain functions are anesthetized and the newly dominant lower brain seeks out pleasure at any cost. Taking this into account, television is like a double edged sword: not only does it cause the endocrine system to release the body’s natural opiates (endorphins), but it also concentrates neurological activity in the lower brain regions where we are motivated by nothing but the pursuit of pleasure. Television produces highly functional, mobile “bio-survival robots.”

Again he quite rightly points to our emotional response to content:

The right brain processes information in wholes, leading to emotional rather than intelligent responses. We cannot rationally attend to the content presented on television because that part of our brain is not in operation.

And how are brainwave pattens are not a reaction to the content shown:

As yet there is no explanation as to why we switch to the right brain while viewing television, but we do know this phenomenon is immune to content.

Which quite easily shows that:

Television, however, is a drug that is actually essential to maintaining the social infrastructure.

source

In a recent article posted on Information Liberation, Rixon Stewart highlighted a number or areas of research that have been conducted into television.

Quoting from Daniel Reid’s book “The Tao of Health Sex and Longevity” he says:

[...] the rays from a TV flicker erratically, causing uneven and irregular stimulation of the retina. “This choppy stimulus is transferred directly into the brain via the optic nerve, which in turn irritates the hypothalamus. In scientific experiments conducted in the US but ignored by both the government and the television industry, rats exposed to colour TV for six hours a day became hyperactive and extremely aggressive for about a week. Thereafter they suddenly became totally lethargic and stopped breeding entirely.” In effect their endocrine systems had been ‘burnt out;’ equally significant was the fact that during the experiment the TV screens were kept covered in thick black paper so that only the invisible rays came through. Thus the damage was done, not by the visible rays, but by the invisible radiation.

What is really interesting is the research being conducted into Television and it’s relation to ADHD. Such a connection should be logical and well documented, but of course there are other factors to consider, as Sally Ward points out:

Sally Ward is currently preparing to focus on television and the way it affects our attention. In particular she will be looking at Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
“…a lot of people think it’s chemical,” she says, but in her view…” it’s very peculiar that at the onset of children’s television it got a lot more prevalent, and at the onset of children’s video’s it got a lot more prevalent.”
Her concern is being reiterated in America where child psychologist John Rosemond has stirred some controversy by suggesting that ADHD is environmentally created; a suggestion that is completely at odds with the pharmaceutical industry, which maintains that the disorder is genetically inherited and makes considerable profit as a result.

But by far the biggest revelation in the article is in regards to televisions deployment in prisons:

Still, there may well be a place for television in modern society: in our prisons. No seriously. At a time when its budget is being cut by over 15% you may ask why the prisons service is spending an estimated £5 million on television sets for a third of its inmates? Why? Well, according to David Roddan, general secretary of the prison governors association: “It’s the best control mechanism you can think of.”

source

Obviously watching television has a negative impact on learning. It is sad that such inquiries will never lead to legislation, or better yet, banning of content aimed at very young children.

[...]

However, amid rising concern that television is being used by some parents as a form of babysitter, [...]

In a report published in July, French researchers found that watching television undermined the development of children under three, encouraged passivity, delayed language acquisition, increased agitation, reduced concentration and increased the incidence of sleep disorders. The same month, the French broadcasting authority Conseil Superior Audiovisuel (CSA) banned TV channels from marketing shows aimed at toddlers [...]

[...] the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2007, which found that watching entertainment programmes before the age of three was linked to subsequent attention problems.

[...]But Claude Knights, director of the children’s charity Kidscape, called for Ofcom to make parents aware of the dangers. He said: “It is really sad when the TV is used as a babysitter or a means of controlling very young children. There may well be parents that don’t realise the cumulative effects of exposure to TV. Ofcom should state the case and give the concerns about possible harm revealed in this research.”

I very much doubt that someone seriously concerned with the health of children would only call for warnings to parents and further information on the matter. cui prodest?

The controller of CBeebies, Michael Carrington, defended toddler TV. “No-one can argue when they see a child’s face light up watching In The Night Garden that such carefully-made programmes have done any harm,” he said. “Our programmes are produced by experienced pre-school programme makers and we call on developmental and educational experts developing ideas. Guidance is also sought from the Early Learning Goals and School Curricula.”

[source: The Independent]

While this blog covers the effects of television view it is intresting to see other research out there in regards to children exposed to the plethora of digital environements.

This was recently posted on www.tvturnoff.org:

Study Links Media Consumption to Unhealthy Behaviors in Children Children and adolescents fill 45 hours a week-more than time spent in school and with family-using media: television, music, movies, video games, and the Internet. A new study led by the Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chair of the Clinical Center’s Department of Bioethics, has revealed such exposure relates to a rise in negative health behaviors.

[...] An increase in exposure to such electronic resources correlated with an increase in drug use, alcohol use, and low academic achievement, too.

“That 80 percent of the studies we would find have this negative association, that is pretty surprising,” Emanuel said.

[...]The report showed a lack of research into the effects of more recent technologies-the Internet, cell phones, social-networking Web sites, and video games. As media continues to increasingly infiltrate the lives of American children, Emanuel and his collaborators recommended that less toxic, more family-friendly media options must be introduced.

Emanuel stressed that regardless of content, media intake alone can lead to behavioral effects and is incorrectly assumed to be unavoidable. “We probably have sent somewhat the wrong message-that if you don’t expose your kids to computers they’ll be ignoramuses and they won’t be ready for the 21st century jobs,” he said. “What you really want are kids who are creative, and there’s no evidence that being exposed to the various media enhances creativity.”