TOTALLY GEEKED!

Parents are urged to have kids watch less TV, text less and interact in-person more, and play less video games.

I’d like to offer a dissenting view.

Less TV?

The arguments against TV-watching: It's mind-numbing, sedentary, and exposes kids to gratuitous violence.

Numbing? TV, net, is more stimulating than are most in-person interactions, especially those most kids would be doing if not watching TV—for example, playing Candyland, nagging mom that he's bored, or even reading a book. Our exalted view of book reading implies enduring learning. But how often do we, even as adults, read two pages and remember little of what we just read? How often have we read an entire how-book and a year later, remember only a few of its points.

There's reason to believe TV is a better learning tool than is most kids' live interactions, which often consist heavily of giggling and fighting. And unlike a book, TV presents content both visually and auditorily, often in a context more engaging than what's going on in their apartment or neighborhood, for example, other lands and wild animals (link is external), even other planets (link is external).

Remember too that the linguistic level and values lessons even in sitcoms, let alone the critically acclaimed TV shows (link is external), is generally higher than in many people's families, let alone among the friends many children keep. We relentlessly hear of a 30 million-word gap (link is external) between rich and poor kids. That's largely a function of parents’ and neighbors’ linguistic competent being lower even than sitcom dialogue. Personally speaking, I am a child of new immigrants who spoke essentially no English. and I grew up in a Bronx tenement. I learned to speak and even read mainly by watching TV.

Sedentary. Most experts agree that people, including kids, need just one hour a day of exercise (link is external). That leaves plenty of time for screen time. In addition, studies on adults suggest that people should get out of the chair for five minutes an hour. (link is external) Parents should encourage their kids to do that. Those should mitigate much of the concern about TV being sedentary.

Gratuitous violence. Of course, shows that are mainly gratuitous violence can't be defended but parents can easily block those by using the V-chip built into all TVs since 2000 (link is external). and/or the parental controls offered by most cable companies.

Occasionally watching violent TV is very unlikely to result in a more violent child. For example, a 2014 study (link is external) found that it took two hours or more of daily watching of primarily violent TV to explain less than 3% of the variance in violence-related behaviors. In other words, even among inveterate violent TV watchers, more than 97% is caused by other factors. And that was merely a correlational study. As a New York Times review of the literature stated (link is external), "What's missing are studies on whether watching violent media directly leads to committing extreme violence."

Shallow values. Consider what the child would otherwise be doing if not watching TV. Are such activities likely to yield better values than portrayed in many if not most of today's TV shows? For example, this Huffington Post review of modern sitcoms, highlights their prioritizing respectful treatment of The Other. (link is external)

None of the above argues for six-hour-a-day TV watching but it does argue for our asking ourselves whether parents and educators are focusing too much attention on the TV "problem" when there are unquestionably severe problems that deserve more attention—for example, the diminution of differentiated instruction for above-average learners in today's era of focusing on "the least among us," which drive so much education funding and policies, e.g., No Child Left Behind. That causes tens of millions of students to sit, yes sit, stultified for hours every day, for more than a decade. All students should be entitled to an appropriate-level education, including above-average learners.

Less electronic communication?

Since the telephone was invented, parents have lamented that too much interaction is electronic rather than in-person. But one can't reasonably assert that communicating via email and text is a net-negative compared with in-person communication. True, there is advantage to in-person exchange but also to communication by email or text—the same advantages that inhere to old-fashioned letter writing, notably the opportunity to think about what you want to say rather than say it as soon as it pops into your head. And who could argue against kids needing to write more? As they say, the best way to get better at something is to do more of it, especially because you do get feedback from email and text writing---If your writing is unclear or rude, you'll more likely to hear about it than if you said it verbally, where your words immediately vanish into the ether.

But what about social media such as Facebook? After all, a nefarious child could post uncomplimentary words and pictures about a person whereupon it would end up being viewed by five, ten, 100 people. (It's extraordinarily unlikely to go viral and be viewed more than the Gangnam Style video.) Yes, schools and parents—as part of the appropriate anti-bullying/ostracizing campaign now front-and-center in the schools--should try to help kids become more enlightened about posting, for example, recognizing the potential good and harm that posts about another person can engender. But to restrict the use of today's written communication tools is no more sensible than earlier generations' parents discouraging kids from writing letters.

Less time on video games?

If you listen to the anti-video game activists, you'd think that most video-game time was spent giggling over the Bad Guy in Grand Theft Auto killing prostitutes. A dispassionate look at what's happening when kids play video games yields a different picture. So does the data. A review of the literature (link is external) by Elizabeth Granic et al in the American Psychological Association's lead journal, American Psychologist, found that even violent games yielded cognitive and psychosocial benefits. And most games are less objectionable, indeed many (link is external)are overwhelmingly educational and pro-social.

Of course, the biggest objection to video games is that they inure children to violence, making them more likely to be violent. Not only is the data on that equivocal (link is external)but, because it's so difficult to assert how causal video games are compared with other factors, we need rely heavily on logic. And logically, kids seem as likely to get violence out of their system by playing a video game than to be spurred into attacking a real person because s/he blew up some pixels in a video game.

Too, let us not forget that there is value in fun—Kids spend all day in school, which then is followed by more work: the dreaded homework. Do children not deserve a fair degree of discretion in what they do after that? Don't you want that for yourself? Of course, parents should have a say, perhaps even a dispositive say, about which games to play.

The big picture

Whether TV, phone, social media, or video games, if we truly celebrate diversity, should we not accept that some people are simply more introverted than others and that we shouldn't try to force-fit them into a standard mode of recreation? True, forcing introverts to spend more time after school with peers could improve their social skills but, as so many unpopular kids can attest, it could also reinforce their feeling bad about themselves.

In other contexts, we urge teachers, parents, and bosses, to build on people's strengths and preferences, not accentuate weaknesses. After school, and after doing homework, if a child (or an adult) chooses to spend discretionary time watching TV, on the phone, in social media, or playing video games, shouldn't that preference be as honored as that of child who wants to spend lots of time reading a book or hanging out with friends? Wouldn't you want that freedom to choose?

Sometimes, kids know when they're better off being alone. When they mature and feel ready, they may, on their own reach out more. But as with toilet training, forcing the issue may do more harm than good.

The larger point is that denigrating electronic recreation, even if a child spends a few hours a day at it, may not be an issue worth fighting about. We have to pick our battles.

Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-do-life/201502/the-case-social-media-tv-phoning-and-videogames