Plato’s Cave

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.”