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Jan 25, 2009 
For the most part, we usually hear the negative aspects of television. Too much violence, bad language, sexually suggestive ads, and poor behavior. Throw in all the commercials encouraging our kids to nag us for the latest Unicorn Princess or various stuffed animal that excrete one chemical or another and most parents probably have some belief that “No TV is Best”. The problem is what these kids should do with all that newly acquired free time. Surf the Net? Run the Streets? Sleep? If those are the alternatives…..how bad could TV be?
If I surf through the 100’s (and maybe 1000’s) of television stations, I see good stuff out there. Good is probably a relevant term. Good to me might be the Navy Seals documentary on the Discovery Military Channel where my wife might find 30 Minute Meals by Rachel Ray to be good. The point is that useful, educational, non-corruptive shows certainly exist. Unfortunately, I’m starting to come to the impression that very few people actually watch them. Now…..to the kids.
A few years ago, I picked up a book at the library. It is called The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids
I’m going to try to make this a multi-part blog diving into some of the research. One of the nice parts of a research-oriented book is the depth of reference material used and quoted in the notes. One of the good uses of the internet is the posting of many academic articles and papers. Some are free. For example….in about 2 minutes, I found this article called Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children. How cool is that?
If you are interested in buying the book, for some reason it is on sale at Amazon for $5.99 (Cover price is $24.99). You can always snag it at your library, but I think you’ll probably reference this multiple times….so for $5.99 it’s a bargain.
I’ll delve into television with education, aggression (my boy’s days watching Star Wars may be numbered as I re-read this book), body image, and the teen/college years (sex and alcohol). Just want to be clear that I’m pulling information from this book and references while adding my opinions and experiences to the mix. At a summary level, I’m definitely biased towards less TV than more. If I had to choose No TV vs. Unlimited TV, I would immediately save about $50 per month on my cable bill.
A good use of TV. When I was in high school taking Biology, I had a teacher (I’ll call him Mr. C. for privacy) that encouraged us to watch the Discovery Channel. Rather than just say “it’s a good channel” which would have done little or nothing, he actually allowed us to earn bonus points towards our grades. Though this wouldn’t work for every kid (maybe just the academic types), it definitely influenced me. We could watch any show on any topic (let’s say African Predators). While watching, we would document interesting facts. It wasn’t an English essay exercise….just putting down the pen to paper and probably some proof that we actually watched it. Next, we’d turn in the paper and get some points towards our grade. Did I become some great biologist or scientist? Nope, certainly not. However, this exercise created some sort of appreciation for these documentary/nature/Discovery channel type shows. To this day, I still watch these types of shows. Just thought I’d include a positive television story.
What shows on television do you consider to be a positive influence on your kids?
Are your viewing habits today impacted by your viewing habits as a child?
thank’s for the interesting advice
