Response to "Um . . . "

Hi John,
I actually found this piece to be quite well-informed and the details accurate. Having lived and worked in BC, I am aware that the author is citing a 2001 BC Media audit conducted by the School of Communications at SFU. It’s freely available online at this weblink and is the source for the 85% number
http://www.sfu.ca/media-lab/research/mediasat/secondschool.pdf
Given that this audit was done in 2001, I imagine 85% is a conservative number.
Also, it’s clear to me that screen and media refer to any and all of the media that kids interact with: tvs, computers, cell phones, video consoles etc.
And you are seemingly unaware of the massive industry that is created to sell what they describe as “educational” materials to kids. The infamous Baby Einstein series is the best example.
I wanted to respond to some of these strong criticisms you make because unlike you, I thought this served as a very good, instructive introduction to parents who want to do something against the onslaught of corporate media that targets their kids on a daily basis.

Cancel Your Cable TV

Like any addiction, the best way to stop compulsive TV viewing is to cancel the source: turn off your cable, cancel the satellite subscription. In addition to saving $50 per month (or more), suddenly each member of the family will have an extra four hours a day.

What happens when the TV gets turned off? People begin to read, to think, to take walks, to become conscious.

Humankind spent the first 1 million years not watching TV. Try it. Soon, you'll wonder how you ever survived with the TV blaring in the background.

Great article.

Jeffrey J

And it was a better place?

"What happens when the TV

"What happens when the TV gets turned off? People begin to read, to think, to take walks, to become conscious".

God forbid! God forbid they play outside or something utterly crazy like that. Move their bodies, explore (other than a new webpage), feel the summer breeze in their hair (or, ok, the rain in the case of Vancouver).

I tutored a 13yr old Canadian boy on Tues evening and asked what he had done all day... video games!! ALL DAY?? I asked. Yup. ALL DAY. Hadn't been outside. It was 4pm. I told him point blank I thought that was awful and asked why he hadn't gone out to play basketball or something with his friends. His answer: They were inside all day too, playing video games. They were all interacting together online!! Well, of course. That's healthy. Silly me.

When I was a kid my father told me of how he would spend summer days playing alongside a river in front of a castle with his little sister in southern island... as a child I explored my neighbourhood parks in my hometown in Ontario with other kids and my little brother, going home only when the street lights came on, because my mother refued to allow us to watch "the idiot box". I now thank her for that. Apparently many (though not all) children nowadays spend their summer holidays staring at a computer screen.

Wow.

southern Ireland, that is..

southern Ireland, that is.. :)

TV Turned Off, Kids Got Smarter

We cancelled our TV in 2001. Kids complained loudly. For a while. Then took up reading. Got smarter. Went to college. Still uses computers and FB and social media. But no TV. Best thing we ever did.

Unscripted play

" What is squeezed out (play, collaboration, community) when young people are pushed into playing out the scripts of the adult world (work, competition, independence)?"

That is such a good question.

For all ages to ponder, and benefit from.

Books!

Read to them when they are small, turn them on to books right away. Mock the media garbage in front of them. No kid wants to be thought of as a moron. They will find most of the mass media shallow and boring after that.

Unscripted play crucial

Many parents are afraid to allow their kids unscripted play time due to unpredictability and the mostly unsubstantiated risks much associated with the fear peddling of that same mainstream media that works so hard to turn kids into lifelong consumers.

Better to have kids inside watching TV or playing videos rather than running wild around the neighbourhood. After all, they'll only get into trouble and their parents will face embarrassment and be viewed as inadequate or negligent by their neighbours.

So summer is loaded up with organized activities from regular soccer games and practices to computer camps, most of which have considerable value except when over-scheduled. Kids may even hide their precious, free time play from their parents.

But I'm a bit confused with the "scripts of the adult world", notably "independence."

Unscripted play, depending on situation, may require collaboration and community, or not.

But unscripted play definitely requires independence, playing alone before parents get up in the morning or when best friends have gone away on vacation, or... Imagination can be both solitary or cooperative.

But it cannot be so pre-scripted as on TV or most video games. I wonder if any studies have been done that link excess screen time with the lack of truly original and imaginative problem solving activities, not just how to get through a video game maze or copy a paper princess outfit, complete with petro-waste scents.

Not part of most school curriculum

The notion of MEDIA LITERACY has been promoted, by this author and others, and was presented as badly needed in our schools for decades.

A few teachers have been able to take regular class time to encourage students to evaluate how media is presented to them and how it affects their views.

Locally developed media literacy courses in a couple of locations have been implemented with some success.

But it has only been an optional course in a few secondary schools, while both time constraints and the push on the basic 3Rs have sidelined this valuable aspect of modern education.

Some parents can and will address media issues on a consistent exploratory (no lectures) basis with their kids, but surely not all, or even most.

anarcho

So you're saying that if it's not in print it's all "media garbage"? Hmmm, interesting. Is there any good media garbage? Are all books worth reading? Fairy tales are found in books, aren't they.

There's an awful lot of literary snobbery out there. There are some highly intelligent and very articulate people who can't read or at most can't read well and who are very successful. So reading, although it helps, may not be all that it's cracked up to be. In fact it may not be necessary at all.

You can only read so many books before reading becomes a form of escapism like everything else.

I'll close with the following phrase variously attributed to a wise old Chinese or Native American sage.

"Tell me and I will listen, show me and I will understand, involve me and I will learn."

It doesn't say anything about reading.

OwlRol

Loved your posts.

I was a little confused, too, by the author's reference to independence - I'm not sure if she's referring to the loss of 'interdependence' that comes with the loss of community - hopefully she'll expand on this.

In any case, you are bang on in the quote below:

Quote:

"But unscripted play definitely requires independence, playing alone before parents get up in the morning or when best friends have gone away on vacation, or... Imagination can be both solitary or cooperative." End of Quote

Hopefully the independence involved in unscripted play will help to ignite and sustain much needed measures of non-conformity and originality in our children - creating a true sense of self in them that is not determined by every mindless twitch of the herd....and that is crucial to the development of critical and imaginative thinking .

snert

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop's_Fables

Sturgeon's revelation

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the details of this story but it is relevant in any case so, as told to me by my brother, an avid science fiction reader:

Renowned sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon was approached at some social function by a rather aggressive critic who stated "95% of science fiction is crap!",
To which Sturgeon, after a moment's thoughtful pause said calmly "95% of everything is crap." - known since as "Sturgeon's Revelation"

Our kids, and grandkids, will be around long after we are gone. If we cannot teach them to tell BS from truth, they will be condemned to be stooges for the brainwashing industries, TV evangelists, and cynical politicians pretending to be "realists" by conceding the high ground to shysters and pirates, who lecture us on morality as they rob us blind and on economics as they drive the economy into the ground - or under it.

Anyone who has taken an interest in history knows western consumer cultures are well down the slippery slope to disintegration, as the bonds of love, trust, and interdependence required for a healthy culture are rotted away by narcissism and self centred obsession with the shallow and the surface, with greed and self indulgence seen as prized social values.

Sorting out the real from the fake isn't so hard if your BS detector is functional, but where can you go these days to find one or get a rusty one reconditioned?

Garbage media

Snert, when I say "mass media garbage" I mean garbage media, not all mass media, and not all books are worthwhile either. One just has to be discerning, that's all.

anarcho

"One just has to be discerning, that's all."

Aye, and there's the rub!

Suffering

The second of Gautama Buddha’s four noble truths is that attachment (desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging) is the cause of suffering.

Media and advertising are primarily in the business of creating attachment, thus suffering.

Advertising directed to children is the worst from of child abuse and should be treated as such.

Om.

Think, cough cough, About It! (1 of 1)

Media literacy? Okay, I'll go with that.

It's just a part of the great task of waking the people up, of stirring them to acquire the skills - accurate information, language, love - with which to fight back against the dark forces of corporatocracy.

It's not just about schlock proofing kids, Is it? I'm temporarily residing in Oshawa where I was born and where my family lives. I'm not enjoying it. This town is redneck. And while I love my brother who has given me free shelter while I climb out of a deep dark hole, I am deeply saddened and troubled to see the way he, and his offspring, and everyone around him, are hooked on tv and other mindless, destructive products like tobacco, alcohol and drugs. (I have no problem with alcohol. But it can be absued.)

I think that the addiction to tv is worse than the addiction to tobacco. What you need in the fight you are - if you're conscious enough to know you need to fight - is your mind. True, If your body dies, your mind goes with it. But even so, While you live, it's your mind, not your lungs, that will enable you to engage in fightback against the destructive corporatocracy, which is a fight that potentially is of benefit to you, yours and the planet.

I piss everyone here off when I open my mouth and say anything. It's really, really hard to say anything. And I hardly do. It's not just the expected and unsurprising problem of waking people up from their Matrix-like life and inviting their resentment when you force them to see that they have a big job in front of them - of learning what's going on around them and becoming, potentially, a part of the solution rather than being a part of the problem - if they want to be free the way they've been led to believe they are. The problem of broaching the subject of their media literacy and it's importance also involves the difficulty of navigating, as a principled person, the tricky moral dilemmas that that task presents you with.

Like smoking; Really, It's behavior. How do you tell people how to behave? You can't. Do you want them to tell you how to behave? Would you tolerate it?

Yes, Smoking isn't something that is always harmful to solely the smoker. But I prefer to not engage in losing battles. It's how I reason. Without giving anything anyway - the truth and facts for example - I would rather not engage in that fight. I'll give my opponents the last word here and focus my efforts where my opponents, the plugged in ones who can be anyone, have 'no' advantages.

Think, cough cough, About It! (2 of 2)

We all need to self-tranquilize. If you tell a smoker or a tv addict that they should lose their bad habits, you'll lose them if you don't do that carefully. I get the comeback that "You just look at blogs all day." (I know. It's just sad.) There are better arguments we can make. Mind you, those above facts go into them.

Press home to your addicts that the news they consume on tv is from 'corporate owned' media. (I download and watch a few fantasy shows, but I don't watch tv.) It's not ubiased. The purveyors of that news have an agenda. And their news and information is pushed at you, not because they are generous, at least not in any positive sense. They benefit from the number of eyeballs they can collect for the ads their sponsors have them carry.

Corporate owned media is not media for the lazy only, but lazy people won't make an look for information and instead rely on this propaganda-ridden tripe. That point might agitate an addict, but you can make it - provided you aren't thrown off balance when they are thrown off balance by these, to us obvious truths. Just stay cool and put it out there.

Think, cough cough, About It! (3 0f 2!)

Missed this. Sorry.

People are damaged. (And it's tv addicted parents who need the medicine that progressives are able to bring to them if they aren't going to pass on their 'sickness' to their kids and so on.) But I think that the human mind is amazing. It can heal. It won't heal because we human teachers are superhuman and have magical abilities. It might heal, and our being good teachers, who possess love, humility and patience, means there's a chance. Today a tv addict is agitated by your clear message to him or her that they are living in a fantasy world that was designed by an uncaring crowd who benefit from that, but tomorrow, when your message has sunk in, that addict may be open to hearing more.

Love? Caring is knowing. When you care, you put your head up and look around you. You are concerned about any dangers that may be out there and which could impact you and your loved ones. Looking around means taking in knowledge.

I highly recommend to those who find this subject interesting the documentary Psywar (http://metanoia-films.org/watchonline.php).

daveoferg

"Advertising directed to children is the worst from of child abuse and should be treated as such."

Very perceptive. May take a while to get into the mainstream, but you've got my vote.