Children, Television, and Attention Deficit

I enjoyed reading a recent post about a child's perspective on ADHD on Well (New York Times), one of my new favorite blogs.

Some of the comments mentioned television, which prompted me to post this comment (#71):

There is some evidence to suggest that the link between television and ADHD is possible, although much more research would be needed before a causal link is documented.

We know that many structural features of television cause automatic reallocation of attention resources. The most studied of these structural features is the camera change, or edit (from one camera shot to another). It is impossible to notice at the conscious level, but every time the camera changes, the brain is momentarily confused about what happened. This makes sense if you think that the entire visual screen changed in 1/30th of a second (in the United States).

Several academic studies — starting with the work of Dr. Annie Lang of Indiana University in 1990 — have shown that camera changes lead to orienting reflexes, which lead to automatic reallocation of attentional resources.

Television tends to be increasingly fast-paced (i.e., frequent camera changes) these days, and we know that fast-paced television can overload the cognitive processing of viewers. This is especially true when there are more than 10 camera changes per 30 seconds. Ironically, my kids are watching TV in the same room right now, and this kind of fast pacing does indeed occur in limited stretches. I just counted.

So it is possible — although far from documented yet — that fast-paced television is “teaching” the brains of children to expect a world full of rapid visual change — far more change than one would expect in the natural world. Thus it follows that perhaps these brains crave change and therefore seek change when it is not present. Again, it’s *possible.*

The data suggest that it’s not just television — but the type of television — that may be to blame. As someone who conducts research in this area, I would not expect boring, slow-paced television to exhibit much of an effect. Parents: Have your kids watch C-SPAN! Of course, children (like adults) prefer faster pacing, which is part of the problem. We like the content that is most likely to be bad for us.

— Posted by Samuel D. Bradley

I kid you not when I say that I wrote this with my laptop in the living room as three of my four daughters watched TV in front of my. In part due to concerns about brain rewiring, the baby is not allowed to even face the television.

It Was a Mistake to Let Kids Watch TV

I have a doctoral degree in telecommunications.

I taught an entire class on sex and violence in the media last semester.

But it was neither of those things that led me to my current conclusion. It is television's powerful force as an agent of socialization that is the problem.

Sitting here yesterday, my kids were watching Baby Looney Toons before school.

Really, what could be more innocuous than that, right?

Wrong.

This particular episode involved Baby Sylvester (a boy) wanting to play at a tea party. He got kicked out and told to do something such as play basketball, at which he was bad and of which he was afraid.

Meanwhile, Lola (a girl) did not like to be at the tea party and longed to play basketball with the boys.

Let's take a look at that, shall we?

The entire point was to set up a conclusion that we should not gender stereotype these activities. However, in order to satisfy this seemingly good resolution, the bulk of the show had to build up these gender stereotypes to be torn down.

And I think that is fundamentally bad.

At the end of the day, one has to ask what the children will remember. Will they remember the build up or the tear down?

As someone who does research within this area, the data suggest that children will remember the build up. These gender stereotypes are consistent with what they will see in their real lives, so the build up will resonate with their real lives. They get a double dose of the stereotype. The life lesson is far less likely to be remembered.

When I ask my kids questions about what they are watching, my hypothesis is generally confirmed. They bite on the build up.

So they get all kinds of ideas. Multiple episodes of Hannah Montana -- I am sooooo lucky -- center around of a theme of deceiving your parents. Sure, by the end of the episode, there is a tidy ending where the deception fails to pay off. But the lion's share of the episode was a lesson in duplicity.

Say what you will, the Teletubbies had no such nonsense. But it's been downhill from there.

It was a mistake to ever let my kids watch TV.

Growing up, I had friends who were not allowed to watch TV. I pitied them as if they were some kind of pauper child forced to wear home-sewn bib overalls.

But their parents were right. You cannot protect kids from the entire world, but children's television offers almost nothing of value, and it unintentionally teaches a lot of lessons that I try pretty hard for them not to learn.

An Open Letter to First-Time-Parents

It will go faster than you think.

Time, that is.

Sure, you know it will go fast. People have told you that. You even believe that time will go fast.

But the thing is, you have no idea.

Early on in my first daughter's first year, we moved to Albuquerque. My wife, Emily, needed to take two classes at the University of New Mexico to finish her degree at New Mexico State.

At the time, I was working as a copy editor at the Albuquerque Journal, which meant that I basically worked 4 p.m. to midnight. So Emily took her two classes in mid-morning, and I would watch the baby.

As a new male parent, I had no idea what to do with a baby that small. And the baby liked her mother. So it was a stressful time for me. And I'm sure that the baby could sense my stress, which made it a stressful time for her.

Luckily for me, she fell asleep most days in the car after we dropped Emily off at UNM. Also lucky for me is that gasoline was still cheap then. So I'd point my little white Pontiac Sunbird westward, drive out to Edgewood, turn around, and come back.

I can close my eyes and see her in the car seat in the rear-view mirror.

When she did not fall asleep, we'd head back to the apartment on Constitution Avenue NE (my favorite address of all time), and play with blocks. We had these rubber Winnie the Pooh blocks that I would stack up, and she would sit between my legs and knock them over. Time and time again.

Eventually, she'd tire of that and cry. And I'd go to my wits end to find some way to entertain her. Those two hours seemed to last forever. I thought they'd never end.

And then one day, I'm staring at her sitting next to me at Sonic drinking and apple juice slush.

And she's 9.

And where in the hell did 8 years go?

And I was smiling, but there was still a tear in my eye.

And I'd give anything to have that baby back for two hours.

For two minutes.

You know that time will go fast.

But really, you have no idea.

That's So Raven

You have not lived until you have attended a Raven concert with a couple thousand people including several hundred pre-teen girls. As a media researcher, I always enjoy opportunities to partake in media for which I am not the target demo ... that is until 500+ little girls began to shriek. I regained my hearing several minutes later. My 5-year-old daughter had fun, my 7-year-old was a bit afraid of the screaming in the dark, and my 20-month-old slept until the screaming began. Then she resumed her normal habit of shaking her head "no" at everything she did not like, including the screaming. Here is a picture of her having a smiliar reaction during a recent Fourth of July parade.

It was the girls' first chance to see a media "person" in person. Again, this was a mini experiment for me. They were largely unimpressed, except that the 5-year-old wanted to know why Raven couldn't see her waving.

After the concert, it was 97 degrees outside, so we made the obligatory visit to the Butter Cow, got some ice cream, and went home.