subject: TV and Videogames - What do they do to our children and teenagers? [print this page] TV and Videogames - What do they do to our children and teenagers?
TV and Videogames: How do they affect our minds?
In this day and age, where TV and Videogames are broadly available and hardly anyone in the Western Civilizations have not been subject to at least one of the two, we still struggle to understand our fascination with this medium of communication.
Many adults will still remember a time free of videogames and no TV during the day.
In addition we find that violence, threats and vicious-ness or flirteous behaviour can be found even in films rated U. When we compare U rated films of today and compare it to films' 30 years ago we will find that the qualification has changed. You see the rating of a film as 15' nowadays and it is unlikely to have hit our shelves 30 years ago; more likely it would have created a public outcry to be banned.
Being subject to TV and videogames so readily and often from a very early age, from age 1 and less, it behoves to know what it does and how it actually works.
In order to understand how TV works and why we even bother we have to establish a few points:
The basic technique of TV and Videogames is that the picture is projected onto a screen including sound. We see the image and hear the sound which triggers an emotional response.
The most important factor to understand is that either medium creates an emotional response.
Emotional responses and/or motivation are the centre or cause of all human behaviour and reactions.
Emotions cause Effects/Actions & Effects/Actions cause Emotions
Whether a baby smiles and in turn makes you happy or your first day in school or a birthday, everything creates an emotional response in us. This goes for sad occurrences too, lose of a friend, a relative dies, a teddy that was forgotten and so on. In particular, we should not forget moments when we had to make major decisions or were affected by someone else's decision, which course to study in University, letting a girlfriend go, seeing an unjust situation and perhaps not acting upon it or one's parents deciding to relocate or divorce.
On the other hand, we also have emotions that cause effects or actions. Every action you take is prefaced by your emotional state. You can recognise this at once when you are in an emotional state of grief or fear, your subsequent actions will be influenced by the emotion. If you have ever lost an important person to you or perhaps a pet you will remember that, that day or week was overshadowed by your grief. However, even if someone had comforted you, you wouldn't have listen to that person. People in grief don't listen till they get out of grief.
In real life, we are constantly subject to other people's emotions and their actions and it sometimes is not easy to face them. TV and videogames give us the opportunity to face and experience other emotions and actions in a semi-controlled environment. You are in control, you can switch it off. In real life you can't switch off your boss, teacher, parent of anyone else. This explains the escapism and why people watch TV and videogames to some degree. We all want to experience emotions, especially positive ones, ie. Cheerful, happiness, enthusiasm and in controlled doses fear, worry, anger, apathy and so on.
It is safe to say that both mediums give us the opportunity to experience emotions but also create our own emotional response. Emotions are elementary in our existence.
If, you don't feel, you are dead.
If we look at the content of the individual programs or videogames we find some people respond to some films more than others. In other words, each person's likes are individual. This is where it becomes interesting. Let's take a normal experience, that everyone has probably experienced, some loss, i.e. a dog or relative or friend died. You have experience such a loss, now if you watched a movie and a similar experience was shown you would at once know how it felt, right?
So what about an experience that you have not experienced before? I.e. walking on the moon, like Neil Armstrong. The chances are your emotional response will be indifferent or nil. Now if you had walked on the moon too you could at once associate with the images show of Neil stepping on the moon.
TV and videogames, tape into our memory banks which create emotional responses. It is NOT the TV's picture that creates the emotional response. It triggers a past memory and that experience has emotional content to re-experience for you.
Past: Real life: Boy lost his dog
Now: Film: Man lost his dog
Real life now: Boy sees film's content, remembers his own experience and feels sad.
Here is where the problem lies in TV and videogames, they trigger our past experience. We are affected by these experiences and especially children often have nightmares because of them. A child has barely arrived, has a small body and depends utterly on his parents and others to even get a chance to grow up; he is in a vulnerable position. A film tapes into his memory banks and he isn't in control of what is being triggered.
What can be clearly seen, is that: TV and videogames only draw on our past experiences. An experience you have not had before will not result in any emotional response.
Films and videogames don't leave anything to the imagination to the child and more importantly the child's past experiences are triggered.
In conclusion a TV or videogame, triggers our past experiences and allows us to have a brief and shallow emotional response. When it becomes a substitute for real experience the danger is significant. It is not only escapism but also the fact that when in later life certain events occur the individual is not prepared at all and often collapses swiftly due to not being willing to experience life, as he can only passively look at rather than doing.
Children are more resilient than adults, contrary to popular believes, and are able to handle and experience emotions much better than adults. In today's world it seems to be that young people can experience less than grown ups and TV and videogames have a lot to answer for in this respect.
Children under the age of 10 should not watch more than 1 hour TV per day and toddlers under the age of 3 shouldn't watch more than 15 minutes per day. Undoubtedly no TV is better than any. Much of today's children programs are not suitable for children and a U' rating doesn't mean it is suitable even at the age of 4 or 5. In almost every children, U-rated film, we have seen, scenes of threat, terror and fear are shown. These images trigger a child's nightmare which usually contain fear and terror. It is best to avoid TV, etc. but a small lamp kept on overnight can help children to have less nightmares and, if, come out quicker.
This article was sponsor by RaiseAchild.co.uk - Family Parenting and Parent Coaching
