Children Better Off Without Television
Having read an article of mine in the January 1996 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine on the perils of letting children watch television, Jim Wilson of Allen, Texas, responded with an interesting and familiar (to me, at least) personal story concerning their decision to ban broadcast television from their home some eight years ago. (The Wilsons still own a 14-year-old 11-inch TV, which they use for an occasional video viewing only.)
Mr. Wilson writes: “Before we eliminated television, we had noticed the kinds of problems you mentioned in your article: short attention spans, irritability, lack of cooperation and chronic boredom. Today, nearly every one of our five children - who range in ages from 6 to 17 - are straight-A students. Off TV, they quickly developed a variety of interests including sports, reading, art, computing, etc.
“One particularly memorable event happened about two years ago. My son, then 9, called from a friend’s sleep-over party, wanting to come home early the first night. When I picked him up and asked what the problem was, he said, ‘It’s so boring. All they want to do is sit and watch TV!’
“I listen to my neighbors and associates bemoan their family problems, including their children’s difficulties with attention deficit disorder, discipline and underachievement in school. In their home, the television is on almost constantly and everyone’s addicted to it, but my friends don’t seem to get the connection. I’m sure glad we did!”
So am I, Mr. Wilson, and thanks for sharing your family’s success story with me so that I could pass it along to my readers. Over the years, ever since I began warning parents of television’s insidiousness, I’ve heard many, many similar stories from other folks who have chosen to live television-free lives (as did our family when our children were of schoolage).
Not so remarkably, these testimonials are virtually identical, especially when it comes to the changes parents see in children.
The “before” factors include those mentioned by Mr. Wilson as well as incessant fighting between siblings, lack of creativity and initiative, poor school performance, and numerous behavior problems.
Once “withdrawal” has run its course (this usually takes four to six weeks), parents report significant, oftentimes dramatic improvements in behavior, sibling relationships and attitudes toward school.
Not at all uncommon are stories of children with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder whose symptoms improve remarkably and sometimes all but disappear within a relatively short period of time.
To anyone interested in learning more about the ill effects of television-watching on children, I recommend the following three books:
“The Plug-In Drug” (Viking/ Penguin, $10.95), by investigative journalist Marie Winn.
“Endangered Minds” (Simon and Schuster, $12), by Jane Healy, professor of psychology at Michigan State University.
“The Disappearance of Childhood” (Delacorte Press, $13.95), by Neil Postman, professor of media ecology at New York University.
If any one of those readings doesn’t persuade you to break the family TV-habit, then you are a hopelessly in-denial couch-potato.
By the way, the latest good news concerning television and children is that over the past five years or so, the number of hours per week the average American child spends watching television has dropped from 24 to 21. Still entirely too much, mind you, but the trend is in the right direction.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Rosemond Charlotte Observer