Over a month ago a relative of mine published a blog entry about a question that almost all parents today have asked themselves – Should I let my young child(ren) watch TV? She became a mother over a year ago and the post is on one of those blogs new mothers create to document and share her adventures in motherhood. They are a lot of them and (I’m guessing) that topic is in the Top 20 topics these blogs discuss. And I imagine that it’s a very decisive one, especially now where most of us get our daily news through screens than on paper. Is it OK to let my toddler watch TV? What shows are OK at what age to watch? What about violence and cursing? Is too much TV making our kids “dumb”? Should they just read books instead? …..
It’s a constant subject of question that goes back when cave painting was invented. (What, you thought all this “This medium is a bad influence/habit and is killing culture” nonsense is a new recent thing to humanity?)
“...this discovery of yours [Theuth, inventor of letters] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. ” – Socrates, from Phaedrus
Yelp, they were people in ancient times that thought writing was a corrupting medium. Put’s things into perspective, doesn’t it. With every new development come critics who prefer the old ways who nit-pick the new thing for “flaws” and reasons not for them to adopt them … and forcing it onto the children. “Will somebody think of the children?” From the printing press to mobile phones, it always happens. But it’s not the fault of the technology itself….
“All technology can be used for bad and good. It’s up to you how to use it.” – Vladimir Zworykin (an inventor of television)It’s us that control the use of technology, especially when it comes to media technology. We (the consumers) have a control on what any medium shows. No printer would publish a story, unless it would attract readers. No broadcaster would make a programme, unless they knew they are people who would listen/watch it. It costs money to print a book or make a movie or TV show, and it’ll be a huge waste if no one read the book or watched the movie/show. All those hours at the keyboard wasted to compose the decorative words that make up the pile of paper that’s under your couch preventing it from rocking. Also, if no one watched a TV show how is a broadcaster going to make money when the advertisers pulled out before the next episode? Media-makers need to make a profit, like any other industry. And the most guaranteed way to do so is to make content the audience wants to see, read and hear…. regardless of truth or artistic integrity.
In short, we (the audience) have some control on what is shown on TV. But writing hundreds of angry letters rarely works. The most effective thing is to avoid the offending thing by switching channel or switching off the TV altogether. In doing so you’ll end up not discovering that new restaurant that opened up on the High Street you might have liked to try out. And you won’t be the only one. If many did the same thing, that restaurant will have lost a lot of potential new customers, which could have made the restaurant. And when it finds out why, they’ll reconsider where they advertise their business. And other businesses who advertised during the offending show may do the same, losing the broadcaster a lot of advertising revenue. Facing this loss of income the broadcaster might consider cancelling the offending show. Victory for “good taste”!
But, of course, this won’t work with every broadcaster (‘cough’ BBC ‘cough’ PBS). And you may be reluctant to switch off your TV, because you like the ambient sound it provides while you cook, hoover the floors, build model kits or other things you like to do while the TV is on. People don’t complain about the millions of adults doing this every day. But when children enter the equation the Socrates’ of TV (who, I assume, mostly don’t have children themselves, so you got to really question their credentials people) begin to creep in your life.
And this is where I come in.
From what I heard from adults over the years about the subject of kids learning things is that they think young kids are like animals. And most adults think animals are dumb. Therefore young kids are too dumb to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, leading them to the “classic” situation of them jumping off furniture thinking they can fly like Superman. A situation that is captured perfectly in a catchy saying - “monkey see, monkey do.” It has been proven scientifically that from birth to about 3-years-old, most children learn about the world from imitation. But, this is mostly because until about age 3, most kids haven’t had the full training in how to ask questions and understanding the meaning of verbal and visual media let – the traditional way we all learn things. A 2-year-old’s mind is capable of asking questions, like “Why is the sky blue?”, but the ability to say “Why is the sky blue?” and to process the excuse the adult they asked gives them (because they don’t understand Rayleigh scattering themselves) aren’t fully mastered let.
What I’m trying to say is that (despite appearances) young children are smarter than you think. They are not the “dumb” animals the “monkey see, monkey do” saying applies. By believing this saying you are underselling your species. They are the offspring of one of the most successful animals that the Earth has ever seen (and the Earth knows that, very well).
But the fact remains that most of their learning in their early years is in the form of imitating the actions of others.
However, exactly how this is a problem is a highly debated subject. Some say that kids will copy everything they see or hear. Some say they are limits. But the former do have a massive piece of armour – The Bobo Doll experiments of the early-1960s.
clip from The Brain: A Secret History (BBC, 2011)
In 1961 American psychologist Albert Bandura took 36 boys and 36 girls (aged between 3-6) from Stanford University’s nursery school and split them into five groups. One was the control group. The other four were individually shown an adult with an inflatable clown doll. Two of them saw the adult treat the doll nicely, while the other two saw the adult beat it up. These two groups were split by gender to see if the gender of the adult affected the outcome depending on the gender of the child. After seeing the adult with the doll the kids were individually taken to a room full of toys and a clown doll like the one they saw earlier. What was observed was that the kids did copy the behaviour of the adults. If the adult treated the clown nicely, the kids treated it nicely. If they saw the adult beat it up, they bet up the clown. Boys were more likely to be physical with the doll than girls and more so if the adult was a male. Girls were more likely to be physically violent when the adult was a female. Also, kids who saw adults who were nice to the clown were less likely to use a toy mallet on it than the control group (who had a mallet, but no clown).
In 1963 he did a follow up experiment. A group of 32 boys and 32 girls (aged between 3-6) were split into four groups. One was shown nothing (the control). One was in the presence of an adult beating up the clown doll. One was shown a film of an adult beating up the clown doll. And one was shown a person in a cat costume beating up the clown doll. Each individual kid was then placed in a room full of toys and a clown doll like the one they saw earlier. What was observed was that no matter what medium and whoever they saw do it, every kid who saw the clown doll beaten up exhibited nearly twice as much aggressive behaviour as the control group. Also it further proved that boys were more likely to be violent than girls.
These experiments (especially the latter one) have been the smoking gun in the debate that TV violence makes viewers (especially children) violent in the real world ever since. But some have criticised this experiment for a few reasons you should know about before you use this experiment to prove your point about kids imitating everything harmful they see on TV.
- The kids used in the experiment were all from the same socioeconomic background (they were the children of Stanford students who were in their nursery (a rare luxury for most Americans at the time, except for white professions). But this didn’t stop Bandura concluding that the results applied to all children.
- The kids were a bit older than they were when Bandura did his initial Bobo Doll experiments in 1961, so the kids may have had outside influences before watching the clown doll been bet up.
- Between the kids watching the film and been left in the room with the clown doll, they were exposed to a mildly frustrating situation to elicit aggression. Also they were denied the chance to play with the toy for a while, making them agitated. In short, they were primed to become aggressive before they saw the clown doll.
- And the clown doll in the experiment was designed to be hit in the first place. You can tell just by looking at it. (To remove this variable the experiments were restaged later with a real clown instead. The results were the same. What do people have against clowns, anyway?)
- Also it assumes that every child is the same biologically.
Not every kid is the same cognitively so they are going to be kids who will develop slower than the average statistics most development charts show (which should have this fact included as a well-being warning for parents). This is especially true when it comes to children on the autism spectrum, which include me ….
“Children with autism exhibit significant impairment in imitation skills. These deficits have been reported on a variety of tasks including symbolic and non-symbolic body movements, symbolic and functional object use, vocalizations, and facial expressions.” - Brooke Ingersoll, PhD (The Social Role of Imitation in Autism: Implications for the Treatment of Imitation Deficits, Infants & Young Children (Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 107–119, 2008))
This puts me in quite a unique position in this debate. Thanks to my autism I have a sort of buffer for the media I’m bombarded with every day. I am more aware of the psychological tricks the media uses on us than most people are aware off, and I do read up about them from time to time, which is one reason I am a cultural vandal. I have also nit-picked bits and pieces from stories and accounts everywhere, from books to online posts. With these (plus my childhood memories) I am going to tell you all a true insider account of a child’s mind in the hope of helping you understand how kids learn things and process media. I hope this would help finally clear things up and answer those questions you had regarding whether you should allow you kid(s) to watch TV.
But before I begin this, it has to be pointed out that the fundamental component to learning is memory. Although it can be observed that babies do have some form of memory (such as the appearance of their mother), (according to a study published in 2011) most children are only capable of forming solid memories of past events from the age of 2.
And this fact co-insides with the observation that most of us rarely have memories from before the age of 3. Also, rather alarmingly, memories can be rewritten over time, like articles on Wikipedia. So if one decides to try to write an account of one’s childhood experiences of the world, please factor this in, as each time you re-examine your memories you are unintentionally altering them for your present purpose. And I am very aware of that, hence of nit-picking other people’s accounts – from adults.
Now, our main feature.
First off, we humans are mostly visual creatures. About half our brain is used to process visual information, more than any of our other senses. So it isn’t a surprise that people tend to remember pictures better than words, especially children. This is the reason slapstick comedy is timeless. When watching cartoons when I was kid I tended to remember the visuals more than dialogue. I have vivid memories of the design of cartoon characters from shows I watched, but for the life of me I can’t remember exact pieces of dialogue from those shows. Catchphrases and regular gags, yes. But precise pieces of dialogue, no. That part of my memory only developed later (say early-teens).
Because of my lack of recall for dialogue at the time, I could watch shows like Harry Enfield and Chums and Father Ted without my parents panicking about me picking up bad language (that only became a problem later when I first learnt about swearing at about age 9 (My mother hates it.)). I even managed to see Euro Trash at the time. I remember it more for its colourful cartoony sets rather than its content. (If you have no idea what Euro Trash is, be grateful you don’t.)
And on a side note, this also applies to music as well. As I remember from childhood, I didn’t pay attention to the lyrics of songs until well later in life (mid-teens roughly). I was more interested in the tune and sound. To me the words were just interesting sounds. I never processed them as words that have symbolic meaning, like the words from mum or teacher. And it’s not just me. A few weeks ago BBC Radio 6 Music had a program where listeners suggested tracks for a playlist inspired by their kids’ favourite songs. One listener sent in a suggestion and told this story. This listener’s toddler was in Tumble Tots and the organisers of it were staging a stage performance and the kids were asked to suggest songs to dance to in the show. This parent was bought to one side after that day’s session about what song this toddler suggested (which was also the song the listener suggested for the playlist) – ‘Psycho Killer’ by Talking Heads.
Now this track is a great example of what I’m explaining. If you ignore the program inside your head that processes the meaning of words as they are spoken to you, ‘Psycho Killer’ becomes a good tune you can dance and “bah” to. The young me would have done the same thing that toddler did if I had heard of that song back then. My older sister was well into Gothic rock in my pre-teens and played such music nearly every night. My room was next door to hers and the wall separating us was basically a sheet of corrugated cardboard covered with chipped wallpaper (on my side), paint and posters, so I heard her music and developed a taste for music outside the pop I was hearing on the radio. And those nights of muffled Gothic rock has had an effect in my taste of music since. The band Garbage is my music library, and I do listen to them occasionally, even though one song I like the sound of has lyrics that talks about self-harm.
You see, not everyone sees or gets the same message in one piece of individual media, neither that is a painting, a sculpture, a song or a movie. One person can see a work of art (say Andy Warhol’s soup cans) as the greatest example of visual delight highlighting consumerism while another person would see it as a meaningless image and wonder why this is considered art. I think this is something many people who complain about the media don’t fully grasp. Kids would watch a TV show (like The Simpsons) and miss out on a number of things only adults would get. For example, in “Lisa's Pony,” Lisa first sees the pony Homer buys her in her bed during the night. She screams at the sight of the pony. To a kid watching this she is screaming of surprise of finding a pony in her bed. Only adults (who have heard of The Godfather) will get this scene as a reference to the “horse’s head on the pillow.” In other words, it is possible for kids to like things, like gangsta rap music, without getting any “bad influences” from it.
So kids (including the younger me) aren’t that good at recalling verbal language, but good at recalling visual things. Very young kids will act out scenes on TV, but only the visuals. It’s only later (say at least 3-years-old) they will try to recite dialogue of some form.
As a child I had a good visual memory. I was able to re-enact scenes of cartoons in my head all time (I was not idiotic enough (or strong enough) to really hurt myself and other people when doing so.). I even tried to construct models of the sets of shows, like Finders Keepers and How Do They Do That? (I tried to reconstruct the time they flooded the set, using Lego. I used a pile of blue bricks as the water.) It was only later (say about 12) that I “got” what people were saying on TV. I had watched a lot of comedy shows, like The Fast Show, Bottom, Shooting Stars and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and never listened to the dialogue. I just enjoyed the visuals. I still have the visual memory today, and I have since re-watched those shows on DVD to add the dialogue in my memory of them.
Now, some of you may be already thinking that letting kids watch TV a lot will give them too many ideas that could lead to the breakages of many ornaments. But I do have one last important thing to say about this.
A television set is a window to things outside your home or circle of influence. It can show you images from the other side of the world. Animals in the wild. Feats of human achievement, like iconic works of art or sports people trying to break records. If you value the idea that kids should be exposed to as much of the world as possible TV can do that - especially when parents aren’t able to take them far outside their home for whatever reason (budget, geography, politics been a few of them). But I do think they are a few things that should not be shown to kids too early, like Game of Thrones, political debate shows (because they can’t fully understand that stuff let) and most Religious programming (I’m okay with Songs of Praise).
However, there is a one very good reason you should allow you kid(s) to watch TV – it exposes them to many faces. Very young children are surprisingly good at learning new faces. In fact, it has been proven at 6-month-old kids are able to identify individual monkeys. (Something also all adults struggle with, even if they worked with them for years.) This is because the neuron connections needed to recognise faces have not been "pruned" let to just recognise human faces.
"Babies soon lose this skill: By 9 months, like adults, they’re no good at all at telling apart monkeys. That’s because as time passes, infants are able to see only what they already see in the world. This is a phenomenon called “perceptual narrowing” and it is best known for its effect on language acquisition: Very early on, infants stop being able to tell the difference between certain speech sounds that they’re not hearing. We have to hear these phonemes to know them. And we have to see the monkeys to know them, too. (This works the other way too: Monkeys exposed only to human faces prefer human faces.)" - Nicholas Day
But this pruning doesn't only effect a child's ability to identify individual animals. It also effect their ability to identify other fellow humans, as Nicholas Day will testify...
"My wife, studying in Nanjing at a time when there were very few white people in Nanjing, had her fairly cosmopolitan Chinese roommate ask her, “How do you people tell each other apart? You all just look the same.” She wasn’t being rude; she was genuinely bewildered. Hilariously, when my wife returned to New York, she kept mistaking people on the street for people she knew. And then she thought, My roommate was right: All white people really do look the same. After a year of just seeing Chinese faces, she was, at least temporarily, no longer able to differentiate non-Chinese faces. Of course, this is famously the case with Americans who never leave America, too: Hence, all [insert ethnicity here] look the same. This isn’t racism. It’s just perceptual narrowing. And it happens fast: At birth newborns don’t prefer faces of their own ethnicity; at 3 months, they do."
In short, if you want your child to be able to tell apart Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon (or more significantly (for white folk, anyway), Samuel L. Jackson and Laurence Fishburne) you should expose your child to as many faces as possible. The more variety, the better. It'll be a great game for your kid to play. But it can be hard to find such variety in some locations (such as a countryside village), so if you happen to be in such a location find books, newspapers or magazines ... or switch on your TV.
You'll find a large variety of faces on TV today, especially on kids TV and entertainment shows, like sitcoms and soap operas. I can credit TV (in hindsight) for my ability to recognise faces many white people (sadly) have trouble with. My young eyes saw a number of shows with non-white casts, like Desmond's, The Cosby Show, and Goodness Gracious Me. One of the first regular faces I saw on TV was Andi Peters (when he was that broom cupboard with Edd the Duck). So, from the very young age I knew from observation that my pale-freckly skin was not the only hue people's skin could have. Also, I did have an Asian friend back in primary school.
(As a side note I only first learned what racism is from that episode of Father Ted. I think because I first learnt it from a comedy performance it helped me to "get it" without much difficulty. The concept was explained well quickly, when Ted put on that lampshade and pretended to be a cartoon china-man - and then getting a massive shock when three Chinese people showed up at the window seeing his "impression."
"I never would have done that if I knew there was a China Town on Craggy Island."
Although back then in 1998 I didn't know about the antisemitism the Nazis implemented (I just saw them as my country's opponents during "the war" and the bad guys in Indiana Jones), seeing Ted's shock of seeing Nazi memorabilia in his house (after making peace with the Chinese people of Craggy Island) first cemented in my mind the link between Nazis and "been a racist." From my experience of this example, I can say that comedy can be a great teaching tool for complicated thing.)
And that’s all I have got to say about the subject of allowing kid(s) to watch TV – except one thing. Kids learn more from real world examples than reconstructions made from lights behind a sheet of glass. Unless they have been left in front of a TV for marathon-amounts of time, kids are exposed more to the actions of real world people in front of them than people on TV, especially members of their family, but especially their parents. By worrying about the effect of the “electronics intrusion” on their kid(s) many parents have forgotten that they have the biggest influence on their kids’ upbringing than anything else. No aunt, uncle, sibling, grandparent, teacher, babysitter, robot, pet or medium has more influence on a child’s mind than their parents. It is said that the average person will spend about a decade of their life watching TV, but that’s about half the time the average young person will be under the influence of at least one parent. Parents, you have more power over your kid(s) than a TV set (For one thing, you can unplug it.).
And this has been proven by science in one crucial aspect. In a 2016 study published by BMC Psychology, it has been shown that caregivers will respond differently to baby cries depending on their pitch. And this response follows stereotypical gender roles. Other studies show further proof that parents are unintentionally-enforcing gender stereotypes on their children. In one experiment I saw staged on TV (on the 2014 edition of Horizon "Is Your Brain Male or Female?") a baby boy was dressed in the clothes made for girls and a girl was dressed in boy's clothes. When an adult was presented with one of these babies the adult was guiding the baby to play with toys that were fitting of the gender they thought the baby was (cars for boys, dolls for girls). The babies generally didn't care which toy they were given. The only one who (unknowingly) cared which one was the adult. To me, this suggests that their has been a parent-to-child cycle of gender stereotype enforcement. Adults force kids to do certain things (because its "tradition" and "proper") and those kids become adults who do the same thing to their kids, because they didn't know better.
By been aware of your own influence over your own kid(s) you can help them become more-rounded adults in the future. Adults who weren't subject to the gender stereotype enforcement cycle, because you didn't force them to play with certain toys and wear certain clothes (or worse). And if more parents do this the next generation will be free from been forced to behave in a out-of-date mould.
To sum up, TV (like any toy or person) can be a good influence on your child - you just got to apply caution on specific bits about it, like some TV shows, the size of the parts that make up teddy or the sweet tooth of the neighbour's kid. But remember, not everyone picks up the same message from the same artwork, especially children. Children don't process song lyrics in the same way adults do, but they might repeat lyrics int he same way as one repeats the melody of tunes. Kids love slapstick, but please teach them not to hurt themselves (the TV is (mostly) not going to do that). Comedy can be a great education tool in teaching complicated subjects (like racism and economics). Although what your kid watches on TV can be big influence, it is nothing compared to you and your actions. You have the power to shape your kid(s) destiny. With great power comes great responsibility, so use it well.
Well, that's everything (honest). That is all I got to say about raising children (for not, probably). I await your accusing, insulting comments (which I won't read).
P.S. At the time of writing I AM NOT A PARENT (May as well confess this fact (unlike others)). The closest I am to been one is when I'm with my nephew. As I stated at the start of this article, I was writing this using childhood memories and my knowledge of how media works on us. I am no expert on child anything. I have never claimed to be so, and never will.
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