As my kids sit around home on Christmas break, I started worrying them about too much TV. "It rots your brain!" I claimed. naturally they disregarded me. I Turned to the internet for proof. While I generally agree with th thesis of Bowling For Columbine, that our culture and not just music and TV, promotes violence I found the articles below most persuasive.
An Hour of Prime Time TV Primes Teen Violence
By Amanda Gardenr (HealthScoutNews)
Teens who watch more than one hour of television a day are more likely to engage in violent behavior later on.
That's the conclusion of a ground-breaking research, which uncovered a significant link, particularly in males, between the amount of time spent in front of the tube during adolescence and early adulthood and violent behavior later in life.
The most startling example from the study, which tracked New York kids along with crime data for a 17-year period, involved 14-year-olds who watched more than three hours of TV a day. Those 14-year-olds were more likely to commit assaults, robberies, threaten to injure someone or use weapons to commit a crime at ages 16 or 22.
On the other hand, those youths who watched less than one hour of television a day appeared less likely to engage in aggressive acts against other people.
In general, the study, which appears in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, says that those adolescents who watched an hour or more a day were more likely to be aggressive in their late teens and early 20s.
The relationship between TV viewing and violence appeared to hold true even after compensating for such factors as childhood neglect, family income, neighborhood violence, parental education, psychiatric disorders and previous television viewing as a child. Some of these factors appeared to contribute to the amount of time spent watching television.
"There've been hundreds of studies that have looked at this association in children, but fewer studies in adolescents," says Jeffrey Johnson, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.
"This is the first study to follow a sample of adolescents into adulthood and investigate whether violent television during adolescence is associated with risk for aggressive behavior all the way into adulthood," Johnson adds. "It's also the first study to examine if television viewing at 22 [years of age] is associated with a risk for aggressive behavior over a substantial eight-year period."
Leonard Eron, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and author of an influential study on kids and television in the 1960s, says he was surprised and enlightened by the new study results.
"Most of the research [on television viewing and aggressive behavior] was done with young children and showed that children are influenced by violent television. But I never knew that this applied to adults and adolescents," Eron says.
In the new study, researchers followed 707 individuals in northern New York state over a 17-year period. The mean age of the participants at the start of the study was 5.8 years; at the conclusion, it was 30 years. They were interviewed in 1975, 1983, 1985-86 and again in 1991-93. The researchers also relied on crime data from New York state and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Perhaps the most striking example of the relationship could be seen in those 14-year-olds who watched more than three hours of TV a day, says John P. Murray, professor of developmental psychology at Kansas State University, who was not involved in the study.
"You get a linear increase in aggression particularly for males," Murray says.
It's not clear why the females exhibited less-aggressive behavior, but the study authors speculate that it could have something to do with the types of shows the genders were watching.
An average hour of prime-time television depicts three to five violent acts, according to the study authors. An average hour of children's television, particularly cartoons, shows 20 to 25 violent acts. Even cartoon violence could have an impact on future aggression, Eron notes.
"You think that this is an appropriate way of behaving, that this is the way problems are solved, the way you get what you want and reduce frustrations," Eron explains. "Everybody's doing it so it's OK and you get permission that way to do it."
Johnson adds, "There's a child inside of everybody. Even an adult has a tendency to do some things that are childlike or irrational. And when a person sees a certain kind of behavior being enacted on TV, one might have the tendency to want to try it out. Even adults can be very impressionable at times."
The new study and others like it may also help to answer some of the questions surrounding the rash of school shootings in recent years, experts says.
"There have always been fights in school. But now, with easier access to guns, the lethality of the break-outs and the frequency is increased because you have a culture that says, 'Hey, if someone disses you, take them out,' " Murray says.
How Television Images Affect Children
by Ron Kaufman
"[A nursery school teacher told me] her children were crudely bopping each other much more than previously, without provocation. When she remonstrated with them, they would protest,
"But that's what the Three Stooges do." This attitude did not signify a serious undermining of character. But it certainly showed me that watching violence can lower a child's standards of behavior. Recent psychological experiments have shown that watching brutality stimulates at least slight cruelty in adults, too."
-- Dr. Benjamin Spock, from the book Baby and Child Care, 1968
Fifty-seven percent of television programs contain "psychologically harmful" violence, according to a study funded by the cable television industry. The study, released February 7, 1996, tracked 2,500 hours of television programming. This was the largest sample ever analyzed by researchers.
Oh, that's ridiculous! Television is not harmful, it's just entertainment.
But can the steady flow of images watched nightly from television screens across the country be so easily dismissed as simply entertainment? If the sheer volume of absorbed images is considered, how can what is shown on television have no effect on one's own mental images? And if new mental images are created, shouldn't it be logical to say that they can have an effect on behavior?
But the argument that television has a significant effect on children should not rely on studies alone, but on common sense. When a child is placed in front of the television his focus cannot be diverted and his gaze cannot be broken. That child only has eyes for the video screen. The bright colors, quick movements and sudden flashes capture the child's attention. Only the rare child finds the television completely uninteresting. Even if only cartoons are watched, most children find the images presented on the television set mesmerizing.
Television programs have the power to influence a child's entire daily schedule. "They say they that they go to school "after Huckleberry Hound," eat a TV dinner "during Gilligan's Island," and go to bed "after Charlie's Angels," writes Kate Moody in the book, Growing Up On Television. Unsupervised, a child could watch TV constantly -- endlessly.
A widely quoted figure is that, on average, a child watches between four and five hours of television each weekday, and ten hours on Saturday and Sunday. In a July, 1996 speech, President Bill Clinton noted that, "a typical child watches 25,000 hours of television before his or her 18th birthday. Preschoolers watch 28 hours of television a week." In the life of children, watching television is a significant sensory experience. Many children easily spend more time with the box than they do with any other form of entertainment.
"Each year children read less and less and watch television more and more. In fact, Americans of all ages watch more television each year," writes Moody. "The typical child sits in front of the television about four hours a day -- and for children in lower socioeconomic families the amount of time thus spent is even greater. In either case, the child spends more time with TV than he or she spends talking to parents, playing with peers, attending school, or reading books. TV time usurps family time, play time, and the reading time that could promote language development."
Watching TV is a passive event. Children -- and adults -- remain completely immobile while viewing the box. Most viewing experiences, at least among Americans, are both quiet and non-interactive. All attention is given to the images.
"Just like the operating room light, television creates an environment that assaults and overwhelms the child; he can respond to it only by bringing into play his shutdown mechanism, and thus become more passive," states a pediatrician quoted in the Moody book. "I have observed this in my own children, and I have seen it in other people's children. As they sat in front of a television that was blasting away, watching a film of horrors of varying kinds, the children were completely quiet. . . . They were hooked."
Looking at a television screen does not magically remove a child's energy from within him. A highly active child will remain inactive while watching TV because that is what the medium requires. In order to receive stimulation from the television, the child must be passive, and accept the predetermined flow rate of the images. Both mind and body are passive (called an alpha state) allowing the child to concentrate on the vast, and often fast, array of bright pictures.
"The picture on the TV changes every five or six seconds, either by changing the camera angle or cutting to an entirely new scene," writes Moody. "One researcher refers to these events as jolts per minute, noting that as time is cut up, the brain is conditioned to change at the expense of continuity of thought.
"Adults and children are conditioned to instant gratification and crisis at many levels."
Children absorb millions of images from the TV in just one afternoon's viewing session. And what are they watching? If the child's TV set has cable, his choices can range from between 50 and 70 different channels; all of them showing different programs.
But if the most recent survey is accurate, the odds are that what children are watching is probably violent. With funding from the National Cable Television Association, a group of researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara reported in February, 1996 that 57 percent of TV programs contained violence.
The researchers warned that "the risks of viewing the most common depiction of televised violence include learning to behave violently, becoming more desensitized to the harmful consequences of violence and becoming more fearful of being attacked."
This is an important point. Viewing large amounts of TV violence does not necessary cause a child to act more violently, but it can contribute to promoting a view that violence is commonplace in everyday life as well as creating a heightened fear of being assaulted on the street.
The UCLA report also concluded that television shows:
• Perpetrators of violent acts go unpunished 73 percent of the time.
• About 25 percent of violent acts involve handguns.
• Forty-seven percent of violent situations present no harm to the victims and 58 percent depict no pain.
• Only 4 percent of violent programs show nonviolent alternatives to solve programs.
• Premium movie channels such as Time Warner's HBO and Viacom's Showtime had the highest proportion (85 percent) of violent programming. The broadcast networks had a much lower percentage of violence (44 percent).
Violence on television is not a new phenomena. In 1968, Action for Children's Television (ACT) was formed to try and convince the FCC to limit violence and force the networks to show more educational programs for children. Despite the prodding of ACT, Congress and FCC did nothing to promote children's television. In fact, in 1983, the FCC ruled against providing any provision for children. One response to this ruling was CBS canceling the popular Captain Kangaroo and replacing it with the CBS Morning News.
Finally, 22 years after the creation of ACT, Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990 which directed the FCC, in reviewing TV broadcast license renewals, to "consider the extent to which the licensee. . . has served the educational and informational needs of children." Congress also prohibited indecent broadcasts outside of "safe harbor" hours (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.), the hours when it is least likely that unsupervised children will be in the audience.
And with the passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress requires television manufacturers to install "V-chips" into new sets. With a ratings system designed by the networks themselves, the chip would block out violent programming. FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said he is prepared to force the networks to adopt a system to rate programs. "Instead of fighting the tide of scientific and lay opinion, broadcasters and cable operators who want to show violent material at times when large numbers of children are in the audience should label their shows for violent content. If they adopt such an approach now, they will avoid losing in the Supreme Court and the court of public opinion," he said in February, 1996 speech.
In July, 1996, the White House, the four major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) and the National Association of Broadcasters agreed to support a new proposal to require broadcasters to air three hours of quality educational programming each week.
With the government finally taking steps to improve children's television, the focus then must turn to parents. Awareness that excessive TV viewing is not benign and can have serious effects on a child's behavior and attitude is important. Obviously, turning off the set is the best solution.
Otherwise, TV programs should be discussed within the family. Does the violence, sexual attitudes, stereotypes, and advertising methods shown on television benefit or hinder the way you want your child raised?
FCC Chairman Newton Minow called television a "vast wasteland." Thirty years later, he spoke of the medium again: "In 1961 I worried that my children would not benefit much from television, but in 1991 I worry that my grandchildren will actually be harmed by it. In 1961 they didn't make PG-13 movies, much less NC-17. Now a six-year-old can watch them on cable."
The Impact of Television & Video on Student Achievemnet in Reading and Writing
By Ron Kaufman
"Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up and dance around with royal-blue chickens."
Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life, 1978
The term "cyberspace" was coined by writer William Gibson in his book Neuromancer. Published in 1984, Neuromancer was one of the first "cyberpunk" novels that involved a virtual world alongside the real one. The novels of Gibson, Neal Stephenson and other "cyberpunk" authors tell stories of a not-so-distant future where video screens, computers and other media channels are pervasive throughout the society. These fictional works describe powerful computers the size of small books and sometimes attached to a person's head in the form of an earpiece or eyeglasses. Though science fiction often makes grand exaggerations, the "real" world is becoming increasingly virtual. Televisions, video games, and computers dominate the marketplace.
"Over the next 18 to 24 months, consumers will be barraged with a host of gadgets and media outlets attempting to redefine radio, television, the Web, and leisure time," states Internet World magazine. "Serious entertainment is coming online, and developers, investors, and pundits are scrambling to make dollars and sense of the emerging 24 hour-a-day party." And caught in the middle of this media maelstrom are the children.
The children of this new millennium will be barraged with more electronic media than ever in history. The nature of a child's curiosity will naturally drawn him or her to a video game or interactive television. The other influence is that cable operators, television networks and video game publishers target children (and their parents) as part of the consumer base. Children will not be able to escape electronic media and in the future may be drawn more and more toward it.
Though the new media-saturated world may be wonderful in many ways, what suffers may be traditional educational practices. If children spend their time watching TV and playing video games they are not spending a great deal of time reading and writing. Statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) show that student achievement in both reading and writing has been declining in recent years. The NCES 1998 Writing Report Card states that 16 percent of 4th and 8th graders and 22 percent of 12th graders have not mastered basic writing skills (March, 1999). The NCES 1998 Reading Report Card shows that across grades 4, 8, and 12, no more than 40 percent achieved the "proficient" level of reading and only 7 percent of 4th graders, 3 percent of 8th graders, and 6 percent of 12th graders could read at the "advanced" level.
"The average, or typical, American student is not a proficient writer. Instead, students show only partial mastery of the knowledge and skills needed for solid academic performance in writing," said Gary W. Phillips, Acting NCES Commissioner in a press release after the 1998 Writing Report Card report was issued (Sept. 28, 1999).
These are both disturbing trends that reflect what children spend their time doing. Even though these national studies only reflect samples of students and not the entire population, it is clear that student achievement is going in the wrong direction. In order to become a good reader and writer, children need to practice reading and writing. Whether one believes that teaching the "phonics-first" method (the study of individual word sounds) or the "whole language" method (using full text to discover word sounds) to children in order to develop good reading skills should be used, both theories dictate that a child must practice what he learns.
There is a popular theory of language acquisition called "schema" theory. This idea contends that children develop separate schemata for experiences they have and then apply these experiences to situations that may occur later. Children will also apply schema to things they read and write about so they are not confused. Literacy is achieved when children apply the experiences they have on a regular basis to what they are reading or writing.
"Comprehension of text occurs when we are able to find slots within particular schemata to place all the elements we encounter in a text," states researcher P. David Pearson. "We learn when something goes awry with comprehension and we have to make some structural change in our existing array of schemata to account for that anomaly. Experience guarantees a dynamic quality for all our schemata."
Another language researcher, Robert B. Ruddell, explains that "language and literacy then continue to develop throughout the school years, progressing in a parallel and interactive manner, and their use becomes increasingly flexible and complex." He notes that many social and environmental factors can influence how a child creates his own language models and literacy routines. Additionally, Ruddell points out that "congruence between home and school language and literacy routines and expectations increases the likelihood for success in learning to read and write." He states and previous research has shown that high-achieving children "had enriched home environments -- more books available for reading, more verbal interaction with parents, and more frequent opportunities to be read to than did low achievers."
Basically, the students who read the best are those that spend their non-school hours reading and writing. Households that value literacy and push the children to read will have kids that excel in this area. Children develop and revise their schema throughout their life in school. As schema change, comprehension may change, and the theory states that the child will become more literate and well-rounded. But, what if their are no books in the household? In a household where literacy is not valued, but instead a television set is made readily available, what kind of literacy routine is the child developing? If children spend their time mostly watching TV and playing video games, then the NCES statistics make some sense.
Watching television is a passive experience. The viewer simply sits on the couch and stares at the screen. There is little thought and little physical movement (besides clicking the channel change remote). When discussions of how television affects children arise, it often centers around what is being watched. The effect televised violence and sex has on a child has been documented by many research teams through the years. However, what is being watched is not nearly as important as the simple act of watching. Whether a child is watching Sesame Street, Nickelodeon, or ABC News, the process is the same. "Again and again parents describe . . . the trancelike nature of their children's television watching. The child's facial expression is transformed. The jaw is relaxed and hangs open slightly; the tongue rests on the front teeth. The eyes have a glazed, vacuous look. . . . There is certainly little indication that the child is active and alert mentally," states Marie Winn in the book, The Plug-In Drug.
When a child learns to read and write, he must access the schema developed in his brain. As he reads, the child creates pictures in his mind and uses imagination and points of reference to put the story together. "Television images do not go through a complex symbolic transformation. The mind does not have to decode and manipulate during the television experience," says Winn. "It may be that television-bred children's reduced opportunities to indulge in this 'inner picture-making' accounts for the curious inability of so many children today to adjust to nonvisual experiences." Watching television (and playing video games) does not develop a child's skills in word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, spelling or high-level thinking.
Winn asserts that "the connection between television's effects on children's reading abilities and the decline in their writing skills is clear: there is no question in the minds of educators that a student who cannot read with the true comprehension will never learn to write well. Writing, after all, is book talk . . . and you only learn book talk by reading." Winn makes a direct connection between television watching and inadequate writing skills. She notes that reading and writing are simply neglected by a generation raised on television.
Television is an easy target because the action of watching is passive and its content is usually violent, sexual or moronic. However, other electronic media such as video games, taped television shows, videos, movies, CDs, tapes, and computer use (to some extent), can have the same detrimental effects. Though all these different types of media interact with the mind uniquely, they involve stimuli that is presented and packaged for the viewer or listener. Companies that distribute electronic media do so in an organized way. The target audience is meticulously researched and marketed.
A study released in November, 1999 revealed that most children between 2 and 18 years old are exposed to an average of 6 1/2 hours of daily media exposure, of which television is the most dominant. The study, sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, shows that 88 percent of all U.S. households have two or more television sets; 60 percent have three or more sets; and 53 percent of all children have a TV set in their room. The report states that about 7 out of 10 households with children under 18 own a computer and 45 percent of those have Internet access. Most children also had a radio, CD player or tape player in their bedroom, usually with headphones. "Today's youth have access to more media with more channels or outlets within each medium, offering more content, more vividly than even the most 'outlandish' mid-century science fiction novels once predicted," and, states the Kaiser report, is creating "a media environment in which youth use these media largely independent of adult supervision or comment -- indeed, often absent adult awareness."
The Kaiser Foundation report also notes that while the average child spends 6 1/2 hours each day with some type of electronic media, exposure to print is extremely low. On the average, 2-4 year olds and 8-13 year olds spend around 50 minutes a day reading; the 14-18 year olds spend only 13 minutes a day with print; and 5-7 year olds spend 10 minutes a day reading. The 7th through 12th graders sampled for this survey only reported 22 minutes of daily leisure reading and 25 minutes of reading to complete homework assignments.
In addition to these statistics, the Kaiser Foundation report also presents one other chilling fact. The study's creators measured something called the "contentedness index," which is how children rate questions such as "I get along well with my parents," "I often feel sad and unhappy," and "I get into trouble a lot." The report found that "youngsters who scored at the 'less contented' end of the index reported more media exposure than those who scored at the more contented end." Though the writers admit that this part does not necessary create a causal link between the two factors, it is a concern that "less contented kids read less, but report more exposure to all other media."
How children spend their free time is something that should be paid closer attention by parents. There is a relationship between reading, writing, and how much time children spend doing these activities. If the "contentedness index" data is to be believed, then children may even be happier when they are involved with doing something other than simply watching TV. The Kaiser report concludes that when results show that "a measure of children's contentedness and social adjustment are strongly and inversely related to amount of media exposure and to at least some common aspects of kid's media environment, alarms should sound." When the television is blaring in the house all the time, even when no one is watching, then the message children receive is one of laziness and media control. The television controls the household, not the other way around. Do children come home from school and do their homework, or just play video games with their friends all night? How much time do most children today spend being creative by themselves?
If the problem is too much media in children's lives, then what can be done? It should be understood, that shutting out the media is impossible. The world of 2000 and beyond is one of video screens and computers and nothing short of a catastrophic paradigm shift will change this trend toward electronics. Even if educators continue to value "alternative assessments" in looking at student achievement, this still does not alleviate the problem of poor reading and writing skills. In the age of hyper-media, reading and writing skills are suffering. If educators begin to abandon books and look to other more electronic means of assessment, then something is lost.
"In the television experience a viewer is carried along by the exigencies of a mechanical device, unable to bring into play his most highly developed mental abilities or to fulfill his individual emotional needs," explains Winn. "He is entertained while watching television, but his passive participation leaves him unchanged in a human sense. For while television viewing provides diversion, reading allows and supports growth." Children lose something valuable and personal when they don't read. As Winn contends in her book, children are interacting with a video machine and not with themselves. This is something parents can control.
Parents are the only answer to solving this problem. Children read and write while in school, however, when they leave they become captains of the video world. "American youth spend more time with media than with any single activity other than sleeping," stated the Kaiser report. With this in mind, parents must learn to establish controls in the house regarding media and support reading, drawing and quiet activities. For the most part, parents may be unaware of how the large amount of media exposure effects their child. In order to change the trend of diminishing reading and writing skills, parents may have to do radical things such as . . . gasp . . . turning off the TV.
Copyright 2000 by Ron Kaufman
The Zen of Television
by Ron Kaufman
"But these words
They can't replace,
the life you waste."
-- lyrics from the song "Waste" by Staind
At the heart of all things lies zen. Zen is a philosophy of being. It is a philosophy of existence. The Zen of Television is a person's existential views on television watching. It is a belief system. If one believes that television is a "window to the world," then watching television is how that person connects with the world around them. The reality is that by watching television, you do not really connect with any other living people -- you only really establish a relationship with your television set.
The images on television, however, are quite revealing. These images are also quite mesmerizing. Television images are also not your own thoughts or images. Television shows a world that its producers, writers and editors want the viewer to see. Television is propelled forward by advertising money. Television is entertainment. Television has good points and bad points, but nothing diminishes its hold on people's lives once they enter its grasp. People love their televisions.
For an avid television viewer, their period of zen is sitting in front of the TV screen for hours. This is their life. The buddha says: "Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness." Letting go means riding oneself from desire and want. The television shows all the things we don't have and tries to light the fire of consumerism. The TV says, "Buy a new car," "Buy microwave french fries," "Buy Pepsi," and "Buy Coca-Cola." The Zen of Television does not want to let go. It wants you to hold tight . . . to keep watching . . . and to desire the things you don't have. The buddha says: "Joy comes not through possession or ownership, but through a wise and loving heart."
Television fills the mind with images of the world. As a passive viewer, does one ever think to question their validity? The television looks real enough. The viewer never stops to consider the effect camera angle, lighting and music play in their TV-watching experience. When the amazingly handsome bicycle delivery guy asks out the beautiful lawyer for a date and injects a plot twist into a daytime soap opera, what's to say this isn't really happening somewhere? Does the viewer every stop to consider that professional makeup artists make these people look so great and that a swell in the music and cut to commercial really can't happen? Television imagery is planned and false. The buddha says: "Let your mind become clear like a still forest pool."
To see television as a waste, but choose to watch anyway is an enlightened choice. The buddha says: "The trouble is that you think you have time." Yet, to choose to do something else with one's time is also an enlightened choice. In 1948, George Orwell wrote a book called "Nineteen Eight-Four" about a society in which it was a crime not to watch television. In that fictional book, television told the people what to think. It even acted as a portal for thought-police to spy on the citizenry. In a free society, nothing forces anyone to watch TV. It is possible to choose other paths to follow and use other means of entertainment and information. The world around can shine through just as brightly, without the light of the TV set. The buddha says: "Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement."
To live a proud life in which one's dreams are fulfilled is a common goal. For many who follow the Zen of Television, it is the magic of sitting on a couch with a remote control eating potato chips that is the path to nirvana. However, for some, the television does not inform or help, but only confuses. Television does not speak to everyone. If it does not speak to you, then use your power and turn it off. In a world full of wonder, why waste time in front of the tube?
The buddha says: "There is only one time when it is essential to awaken. That time is now."
The buddha does not watch TV.
Television v. Computers by Ron Kaufman
"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely light and wires in a box."
-- Television Journalist Edward R. Murrow in TV Guide, December, 1958
The Kill Your Television web site went online in its current form in August, 1995. Since that time, I have received lots of e-mail responses saying that television is really no better than computers. Some of the comments I've received include:
"Please don't take this the wrong way and I don't mean to insult you, however, your web page KYTV is basically true, but couldn't the same be said about the computer?"
Chris K
Abilene, Texas
"Dear Sir,
I wrote and spoke with you before. I would like you to include some of the information now coming forth regarding video games and children, since there is no other site of your caliber on the net, and people need access to this information. What is happening with the video games and children is far worse than what is happening with TV...since you cover one so nicely, could you please incorporate the other? Although I am not a parent, I really care about the minds of kids, and seeing that during their early years, they are somewhat protected."
Blessings,
Joanne Stephenson
KIN International
"Computers are televisions too! Staring into a CRT, be it television shows or otherwise has a similar effect upon the mind. Granted, one interacts with the computer, none the less, it is the same basic medium which involves staring into a flickering light, creating the same addictive illusion that something is continually happening of entertainment value. I am not a luddite, but I am both a television and computer addict who recognizes the stultifying effects of this flickering, elusive and seductively medicating medium.
"I do not subscribe to the idea that it is the content that is the problem, but rather that it is the medium and the voyeuristic attitude it elicits.
"Television is a drug. So are computers."
Thanks, Roland
"Greetings Mr. Kaufman,
I am a 16 year old male who attends High School in Toronto, Canada. As have many people of "my generation," I have spent numerous hours sitting in front of my television. However, unlike many at my age level, I barely watch the television these days. I find television boring, time consuming, and especially mindless. I believe that the computer, is a much better way to fulfill your entertainment needs. The computer is basically the same as television, except for one thing: Interactive. In television, I agree with many that all the work is done for the viewer, leaving the him/her to sit mindlessly."
-- Merlyn F. Xavier (not my real name of course)
This last letter is the one with which I tend to agree. Television watching is passive. Besides the physical act of actually turning on the TV set, nothing more needs to be done. Watching TV involves sitting . . . and sitting . . . and staring . . . and sitting . . . and staring . . . for hours and hours. Using a computer is an entirely different experience.
Computer use is interactive. Yes, computer monitors, whether CRT or LCD, are similar to TV screens in their form, but certainly not their function. Simply turning on a computer is not enough. One must do something to the machine to make it operate. People who like computers find them fun because they are actively doing something while using a computer.
There are many similarities between the two mediums. Obviously, both have screens. The World Wide Web has developed an extensive advertising component. Surfing the Web for hours and hours can be easily compared to watching TV. Televisions and computers can keep people informed and convey news events in a timely manner (and so can radio). I'm sure one can think of many other ways in which modern computer usage and television usage are similar.
However, computers, unlike televisions, are expensive, complicated, and require patience and training in order to operate. Anyone can push POWER and turn on a TV set. In order to make a computer work, there is a lot more involved. From the operating system to the printer to the modem to the mouse, computers a different from TVs from top to bottom.
I teach a subject called Computer Science in an elementary school. I teach children from 1st Grade to 8th Grade how to word process; use spreadsheets; use Web browsers; how to COPY and PASTE; how to print; how to draw; and many other uses of a computer. I teach in a computer lab with 30 computers so each student gets a chance to learn on a machine. At the end of each semester, I give the children a grade because the work is hard and requires them to think. There can be no argument that Television could be a subject in an elementary school. What would be taught: "Today class, we will compare and contrast the differing styles of Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera," or maybe, "Today's research topic is: Does Friends imitate life, or does life imitate Seinfeld?" Silly, huh?
The proliferation of violent video games does present a concern for computer users. The affects of television violence on the passive viewing public are well documented. Children who regularly play violent video games may also be shaped by the same desensitization that TV violence causes.
On December 1, 1998, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman issued a Video Game Report Card which warned parents about the growing numbers of violent video games.
"Over the last few years, we have seen the rise of a small but significant core of ultra-violent games that are far more realistic and gruesome than the shooting games that first caught our eye six years ago," said Lieberman. "They are also far more perverse and anti-social in the way they reward death and depravity. Killing and carnage is not enough any more -- to torture and maim is often the name of these games now.
"But don't take our word for it. Just read what the makers of these games are saying in their own marketing. "More fun than shooting your neighbor's cat," boasts an ad for Namco's Point Blank. "Escape. Dismember. Massacre," reads the bloody headline for Interplay's Die by the Sword. "Happiness is a warm cranium," promises an ad for Sony's Cardinal Syn," noted Lieberman.
Violent video games are all the rage. Teenage children all play games with ultra-violent acts and themes. Yet, where TV violence is something parents must closely monitor, video game violence does not get the same attention.
According to David A. Walsh, Ph.D., president of the National Institute on Media and the Family the reason is that not much research has been done on the affects of video game violence. "Since there is not an extensive body of research on the effects of video game violence, some state that there is no harm to children. That was the same argument used to defend television violence for more than three decades. It was only after many years of research had accumulated that that argument was abandoned," said Walsh in a 1998 report.
My favorite video game is Duke Nukem 3D, an ultra-violent, bloody interactive shoot-'em-up game with explosions and lots of blood and strip clubs and lots of bad deviant stuff. Does this make me a bad person? For me, blowing aliens to bits with shotguns and rocket launchers is fun. But I'm an adult and I don't think I would permit small children to play.
Computers and televisions are different, but violence is violence. Parents must be involved in their children's lives and monitor television shows, video games, web sites, e-mail, etc. Bad stuff can be on television and on computer screens, but what you let into your home is up to you.
Richard Olney, an American who lived most of his working life in France. His book Simple French Food 
will blow your mind! Olney cooked in a rustic kitchen in Solliès-Toucas in Provence, France; and it affected his cooking. He cooked directly from the land with the freshest ingredients available to him His food ethic profoundly impacted Alice Waters and he American restaurant Chez Panisse. Olney’s food ethic gets an homage in Waters Chez Panisse cookbook: “The recipes of Elizabeth David and Richard Olney provided a starting point and inspiration to us; and we soon realized that the similarity of California's climate to that of the south of France gives us similar products that require different interpretations and executions. My one unbreakable rule has always been to use only the freshest and finest ingredients available.” 
