When my 4-year-old daughter, Cassidy, went in for her annual doctor’s check-up recently, the clinic’s new pediatrician, Dr. Jarrahi, startled me with an unusual inquiry. After examining her for a short time he commented, “She doesn’t watch TV, does she?”
It’s true that we have a TV-free household, but I didn’t know it showed. Dr. Jarrahi told me that in his experience children who watch little or no television are smarter, more interactive, more curious, and generally better developed that their peers.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by his comment about Cassidy. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended no screen time (TV, computer, etc.) for children under 2 for fear that it will interfere with proper brain development. A small body of recent research suggests that television watching before age 3 adversely affects some forms of cognitive and social functioning at later ages. But these studies only scratch the surface of what television is doing to our children and families.
Although we usually do not think of advertisements as part of the “show,” marketing is at least as strong an influence on children as anything else on television. At present, 16 minutes of each television hour are devoted to commercials. But this figure does not include marketing during shows, which has sharply increased with the advent of new techniques such as product placement and product integration into plotlines. As it stands, the average American child is viewing almost four hours of TV daily, including well over one hour of ads.
Further, a meta-message that cuts across all advertising is that the key to happiness is the ongoing accumulation of stuff. As a result, television functions as a propaganda tool for instilling materialistic values. Each time we allow our children to watch TV we are exposing them to marketing manipulations that promote this larger agenda.
Of course, it doesn’t stop there. In most shows the actions, clothing, possessions and aspirations of the main characters implicitly endorse consumer values. Further, there are systemic barriers to including non-materialistic values on programs.
A few years back the magazine Adbusters tried to place a humorous public service announcement critical of materialism on all the major U. S. networks and cable channels, offering to pay the full fee. There were no takers. The producers were candid about why: They didn’t want to offend their sponsors. Television does not simply promote materialistic values but systematically prevents competing perspective to be aired.
Although computers and other media are making inroads, TV remains the largest source of marketing to children. But is the advertising harmful? Marketing has been implicated in childhood obesity, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, precocious sexuality in preteens, the demise of play in small children and other significant problems. In general, the vast majority of products marketed to children are bad for them.
Further, television viewing itself is harmful. A recent study in Boston of 10- to 13-year-old children found that watching television caused depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, psychosomatic symptoms (headaches, stomachaches, etc.) and negative attitudes toward parents.
Researchers believe it is a combination of the hours that children spend away from other activities, such as socializing with friends and family or actively engaging with the world, and the content of the programs themselves (including advertising), that are responsible for these various problems.
What is to be done? In my opinion, the best solution is to eliminate TV viewing from children’s lives or drastically reduce it to one or two hours a week. Let me reassure you that although children may suffer some from peer pressure when they don’t watch TV, I have seen no evidence that this creates any long-lasting harm. Instead, children regain up to four hours a day during which they can engage in far more rewarding and nurturing activities.
A good place to start is to make the Jewish holidays TV-free, starting with Shabbat. In addition to turning off the TV, I also suggest turning off all high-tech media, such as computers, video games, and iPods, so families can be together without depending on electronic mediation. This is consistent with the original intention of Shabbat, which was to withdraw from the distractions of everyday living in order to contemplate the spiritual and spend time with family and friends.
What a gift this would be for our children.
TV-free resources
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (www.commercialfreechildhood.org)
New American Dream (www.newdream.org)
Simple Living America (www.simpleliving.net)
TRUCE — Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (www.truceteachers.org)
Allen D. Kanner is a Berkeley child, family and adult psychologist and a founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. He co-edited the books “Psychology and Consumer Culture” and “Ecopsychology,” and writes a column on consumerism for Tikkun magazine.