The Hidden Dangers of Television
by Church Militant on Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 8:24am
Children's development needs
Children learn so much in their first three years compared to the rest of their lives. They learn to walk, to speak and experience the awakening of thinking as they grow from being babies to infants. Through play, children develop their knowledge of things and relationships.
Television watching itself affects child development regardless of the programme content. Recent research show that television watching adversely affects children's thinking, speaking, imagination, senses, physique, feelings, and behaviour. It is important for parents to be aware of these effects.
T.V. watching as an experience
Television watching puts children into a passive, trance-like state where they become "TV zombies" a condition quite different from their active, playful state when not watching. Some parents observed that: "my five year old goes into a trance when he watches TV He just gets locked into what is happening on the screen. He's totally, absolutely absorbed when he watches and oblivious to anything else." After television watching children can be irritable. "After watching they're nervous, bored, disagreeable, slowly coming back to normal." What, then, do children experience while watching television?
TV addiction
Marie Winn calls television the 'plug-in-drug' because many people find they cannot stop watching. People joke about being "hooked on TV" Someone said "I watch TV the way an alcoholic drinks."
Not unlike drugs and alcohol, TV watching allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state, where worries and anxieties cannot intrude. The typical vacant state of someone on drugs or alcohol is very similar to the state of the TV watcher.
The eyes need to be completely passive in order to watch TV i.e. a fixed focus, no voluntary eye movements and a fixed head position. It is as if instead of the imagery arising from within as in day dreaming, it is produced mechanically for the watcher by the television.ips with other children, their physical control and their imagination. Playing is a child's work, and channels energy constructively into the learning processes. It is essentially active. Children learn through imitating other children and the adults who tell stories, nursery rhymes, speak with them, and who can provide everyday activities such as baking or making pictures.
TV retards brain development
The brain is patterned by the senses, by movement, speech, thought and imagination. As the brain develops, children shift from a non-verbal "right hemisphere" dreaming consciousness to a verbal, logical "left hemisphere" state. Television watching prolongs children's dependency on the right hemisphere. The "brain" strain on children of forming 625 lines composed of over 800 dots appearing 25 times per second - into meaningful images must be considerable. With the lack of eye movement, this strain can produce sleeplessness, anxiety, nightmares, headaches, perceptual disorders, poor concentration and blunted senses. T. V. watching can produce sensory deprivation.
TV and speaking
Children learn to speak by talking with real people, not by listening to mechanically reproduced sound. Real people speaking communicate the meaning of words, whereas television only reproduces the sounds, a subtle but vital difference, confusing for toddlers. Television by emphasising the visual, reduces the need of children to learn how to speak; no verbal response is required of the child; thus speech is discouraged.
Members of a working-party on reading agreed that "Children knew nursery rhymes much less well than previously, largely because of television which was a "look and forget" rather than a "look and learn" medium.
TV encourages lazy readers
Reading involves concentration, accurate perception, imagination, the comprehension of a story line, and the freedom of the reader to vary the pace. Television, by causing the "vacant state" undermines concentration; by an overwhelming visual impact stultifies the imagination; by blunting the senses, interferes with the mechanics of reading; and by emphasising the nonverbal reduces children's enthusiasm for words.
A reduced sense of identity
Before television, there was a children's culture rich in games, songs and rhymes. Children could play longer, sustain interest more, play dramatically and were more active according to experienced nursery teachers. Television watching puts children into an untypically passive state in which they are deprived of their true work which is their play.
Children develop their sense of identity, of saying "I" to themselves in meeting real people. The people on TV are unreal, impersonal images which do little or nothing to awaken a child's sense of self. Hence "TV children" may tend to relate to themselves and others as things, objects, tools or even machines. This attitude may later develop into an inability to react constructively in social situations.
Anti-social behaviour
The content of violent programmes may affect children's behaviour, for children learn by imitation. However, the nature of the TV experience regardless of programme content may cause antisocial behaviour. Relating to others more as objects than human beings, a result of TV watching, can contribute to violence. Also, the television experience gives an illusion of participating in an activity when in fact one is totally passive, so that children who are heavy viewers are less able to judge the feelings, expectations and problems of others in real life situations.
Almost no educational benefit
Which is better qualified to teach a young child, a machine or another human being? Experienced teachers have noted that children who watch quite a lot of television retain very little of its content after a short while (The "look and forget" Medium). This could be due to the fact that the children are not called-upon to be active; they are not engaging their will-power and creating their own imaginative pictures. The impression left by the TV images is superficial.
The American programme "Sesame Street" was specially designed to help disadvantaged pre-school children catch up cognitively and verbally with those from more fortunate backgrounds. A 1975 survey suggests that "Sesame Street" widened the achievement gap, and that light viewers exhibited more gains in learning than heavy viewers.
What can we do?
If you feel, after reading this, that you would like to change your family's habits with regard to television, how should you go about it? First, make sure that both parents are in agreement. Then realise that it will be difficult to get rid of television without putting other things in its place, especially if your family have been heavy viewers.
1 - Restrict firmly the number of programmes watched, or, if you are resolute enough, get rid of the TV set altogether. Or put it away and use it only for very special occasions.
2 - Offer alternative activities of a creative sort, e.g. crafts, drawing and painting, pets, various hobbies, sports, music, fork dancing, nature studies, gardening.
3 - Encourage reading of well-written books (classics). Read aloud to little ones.
4 - Aim at a positive and warm family life, interesting mealtimes, bedtime stories, singing, nursery rhymes, etc.
5 - Try to find friends who think the same way and help each other, e.g. organising children's parties together.
Television: An Occasion of Sin? - By a Catholic Bishop
“A child came to confession one day and accused himself of having serious temptations against the angelical virtue, perhaps even of having given in, by thoughts and, who knows, maybe in actions.
However, the priest sought the cause of such a misfortune: "So, do you have television at home?" he asked. The child had to admit it and that he did watch the cursed box, sometimes behind his parents' back, sometimes with them, as a family, and that was the cause of his temptations.
The priest gave the unfortunate and sorrowful child the holy absolution, but could he give it to his parents?
Dear Christian parents, are you CONSCIOUS of your terrible responsibility? Do you realize that due to the weakness of accepting and of keeping at home that tool, a source of corruption of minds and souls, you are the cause of unsuspected damages to innocent souls? Because of your cowardice, souls, tender and pure, are stained by the infamous sin? These children will stand up at the last judgment and will accuse you of having been the cause of their damnation....
Let us remember the Saviour's grave words: "He that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt.XVIII,6).
Do you understand, by this sad example, what is an occasion of sin? Our catechism teaches us that we must avoid not only sin, but also the occasion of sin and that it is as grievous to put ourselves (or to put others) in the occasion of sin as it is to commit the sin itself, when we know by experience that we will fall into that sin. (...).
Let us suppress courageously all the occasions of sin for ourselves and for those under our care. Let us determine at this time to get rid of the dirty box. Give it back to your dealer and let there be no more mention of it. Instead, you should re-establish the nice family oratory, you should enthrone the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and that of Our Blessed Lady. And long live Jesus Who will have freed you from a nasty slavery!”
Examination of conscience for Catholic Parents:
Have you voluntarily exposed yourself to the occasion of sin by sinful curiosity, by watching impure movies, or indecent plays or videos?
Have you listened with willful pleasure to immodest language on TV?
Have you harmed anyone's soul by giving scandal, destroying this soul by bad example?
Have you, by your wicked words, deeds or bad example, ruined innocent children?
Have you exposed your children to impure temptations resulting from watching TV?
Have you kept a TV in your home knowing it is an occasion of sin for you and your children?
Have you allowed your children to watch TV, especially without your knowledge and consent?
Importance and Power of Motion Pictures:
As long ago as 1936, Pope Pius XI, warned of the dangers of the cinema. "It admits of no discussion that the motion picture has achieved these last years a position of universal importance among modern means of diversion. There is no need to point out the fact that millions of people go to the motion pictures every day; that motion picture theatres are being viewed in ever increasing number in civilized and semi-civilized countries; that the motion picture has become the most popular form of diversion which is offered for the leisure moment not only of the rich but of all classes of society.
At the same time, there does not exist today a means of influencing the masses more potent than the cinema. The reason for this is to be sought in the very nature of the motion pictures projected upon the screen, in their popularity and in the circumstances which accompany them.
The power of the motion picture consists in this, that it speaks by means of vivid and concrete imagery which the mind takes in with enjoyment and without fatigue. Even the crudest and most primitive minds which have neither the capacity nor the desire to make the efforts necessary for abstraction or deductive reasoning are captivated by the cinema. In place of the effort which reading or listening demands, there is the continued pleasure of a succession of concrete and, so to speak, living pictures.
(...) Since then the cinema, being like the school of life itself, which, for good or for evil, teaches the majority of men more effectively than abstract reasoning, it must be elevated to conformity with the aims of a Christian conscience and saved from depraving and demoralizing effects.
; they seduce young people along the ways of evil by glorifying the passions; they show life under a false light; they cloud ideals; they destroy pure love, respect for marriage, affection for the family. They are capable also of creating prejudices among individuals and misunderstandings among nations, among social classes, among entire races. Everyone knows what damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. They are
The motion picture is viewed by people who are seated in a dark theatre and whose faculties, mental, physical and often spiritual, are relaxed. One does not need to go far in search of these theatres: they are close to the home, to the Church and to the school and they thus bring the cinema into the very centre of popular life.
Moreover, the acting out of the plot is done by men and women selected for their artistic ability and for all those natural gifts and the employment of those expedients which can become, for youth particularly, instruments of seduction. Further, the motion picture has enlisted in its service luxurious appointments, pleasing music, the vigour of realism, every form of whim and fancy. For this very reason, it attracts and fascinates particularly the young, the adolescent and even the child. Thus at the very age when the moral sense is being formed and when the notions and sentiments of justice and rectitude, of duty and obligation and of ideals of life are being developed, the motion picture with its direct propaganda assumes a position of commanding influence.
It is unfortunate that, in the present state of affairs, this influence is frequently exerted for evil. So much so that when one thinks of the havoc wrought in the souls of youth and of childhood, of the loss of innocence so often suffered in the motion picture theatres, there comes to mind the terrible condemnation pronounced by Our Lord upon the corruptors of little ones: "whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones who believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill stone be hanged about his neck and that he be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matt. XVIII, 6).
Pope Pius XI: Encyclical Vigilanti Cura, June 29, 1936
The Dangers of Television:
"But television, besides the element it shares in common with the other two inventions We have spoken of for the spreading of information, has a power and efficacy of its own. Through the medium of television viewers are enabled to see and hear far-distant events at the very moment at which they are taking place and in this way the illusion is created that they are actually present and taking part in them. This sense of intimacy is greatly enhanced by the home surroundings.
The special power which television has of giving pleasure within the family circle is to be reckoned its most important feature (...). If there is any truth at all in that text: 'a little leaven currupteth the whole lump' and if the physical development of young people can be arrested by an infectious germ and prevented from reaching full maturity, how much more havoc can be wrought upon the nerve-centres of their religious life by some insidious element in their education sapping their moral vitality! It is a matter of common experience that children are frequently able to resist the violent onset of diseases in the world at large, whereas they have no strength to avoid the disease that is latent in the home. It is wrong, therefore, to endanger in any way the sanctity of the home and the Church who as her right and duty demand, has always striven with all her power to prevent these sacred portals from being violated under any pretext by the evils television shows.
Unless wise counsels exert an immediate restraining influence on the use of this art, the damage will be done; a damage which will affect not merely individuals, but the whole of human society - and indeed it is not an easy matter to assess the amount of damage that may already have been caused."
Pope Pius XII: Encyclical Miranda Prorsus,
(Sept. 8, 1957)
+JMJ+
Children learn so much in their first three years compared to the rest of their lives. They learn to walk, to speak and experience the awakening of thinking as they grow from being babies to infants. Through play, children develop their knowledge of things and relationships.
Television watching itself affects child development regardless of the programme content. Recent research show that television watching adversely affects children's thinking, speaking, imagination, senses, physique, feelings, and behaviour. It is important for parents to be aware of these effects.
T.V. watching as an experience
Television watching puts children into a passive, trance-like state where they become "TV zombies" a condition quite different from their active, playful state when not watching. Some parents observed that: "my five year old goes into a trance when he watches TV He just gets locked into what is happening on the screen. He's totally, absolutely absorbed when he watches and oblivious to anything else." After television watching children can be irritable. "After watching they're nervous, bored, disagreeable, slowly coming back to normal." What, then, do children experience while watching television?
TV addiction
Marie Winn calls television the 'plug-in-drug' because many people find they cannot stop watching. People joke about being "hooked on TV" Someone said "I watch TV the way an alcoholic drinks."
Not unlike drugs and alcohol, TV watching allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state, where worries and anxieties cannot intrude. The typical vacant state of someone on drugs or alcohol is very similar to the state of the TV watcher.
The eyes need to be completely passive in order to watch TV i.e. a fixed focus, no voluntary eye movements and a fixed head position. It is as if instead of the imagery arising from within as in day dreaming, it is produced mechanically for the watcher by the television.ips with other children, their physical control and their imagination. Playing is a child's work, and channels energy constructively into the learning processes. It is essentially active. Children learn through imitating other children and the adults who tell stories, nursery rhymes, speak with them, and who can provide everyday activities such as baking or making pictures.
TV retards brain development
The brain is patterned by the senses, by movement, speech, thought and imagination. As the brain develops, children shift from a non-verbal "right hemisphere" dreaming consciousness to a verbal, logical "left hemisphere" state. Television watching prolongs children's dependency on the right hemisphere. The "brain" strain on children of forming 625 lines composed of over 800 dots appearing 25 times per second - into meaningful images must be considerable. With the lack of eye movement, this strain can produce sleeplessness, anxiety, nightmares, headaches, perceptual disorders, poor concentration and blunted senses. T. V. watching can produce sensory deprivation.
TV and speaking
Children learn to speak by talking with real people, not by listening to mechanically reproduced sound. Real people speaking communicate the meaning of words, whereas television only reproduces the sounds, a subtle but vital difference, confusing for toddlers. Television by emphasising the visual, reduces the need of children to learn how to speak; no verbal response is required of the child; thus speech is discouraged.
Members of a working-party on reading agreed that "Children knew nursery rhymes much less well than previously, largely because of television which was a "look and forget" rather than a "look and learn" medium.
TV encourages lazy readers
Reading involves concentration, accurate perception, imagination, the comprehension of a story line, and the freedom of the reader to vary the pace. Television, by causing the "vacant state" undermines concentration; by an overwhelming visual impact stultifies the imagination; by blunting the senses, interferes with the mechanics of reading; and by emphasising the nonverbal reduces children's enthusiasm for words.
A reduced sense of identity
Before television, there was a children's culture rich in games, songs and rhymes. Children could play longer, sustain interest more, play dramatically and were more active according to experienced nursery teachers. Television watching puts children into an untypically passive state in which they are deprived of their true work which is their play.
Children develop their sense of identity, of saying "I" to themselves in meeting real people. The people on TV are unreal, impersonal images which do little or nothing to awaken a child's sense of self. Hence "TV children" may tend to relate to themselves and others as things, objects, tools or even machines. This attitude may later develop into an inability to react constructively in social situations.
Anti-social behaviour
The content of violent programmes may affect children's behaviour, for children learn by imitation. However, the nature of the TV experience regardless of programme content may cause antisocial behaviour. Relating to others more as objects than human beings, a result of TV watching, can contribute to violence. Also, the television experience gives an illusion of participating in an activity when in fact one is totally passive, so that children who are heavy viewers are less able to judge the feelings, expectations and problems of others in real life situations.
Almost no educational benefit
Which is better qualified to teach a young child, a machine or another human being? Experienced teachers have noted that children who watch quite a lot of television retain very little of its content after a short while (The "look and forget" Medium). This could be due to the fact that the children are not called-upon to be active; they are not engaging their will-power and creating their own imaginative pictures. The impression left by the TV images is superficial.
The American programme "Sesame Street" was specially designed to help disadvantaged pre-school children catch up cognitively and verbally with those from more fortunate backgrounds. A 1975 survey suggests that "Sesame Street" widened the achievement gap, and that light viewers exhibited more gains in learning than heavy viewers.
What can we do?
If you feel, after reading this, that you would like to change your family's habits with regard to television, how should you go about it? First, make sure that both parents are in agreement. Then realise that it will be difficult to get rid of television without putting other things in its place, especially if your family have been heavy viewers.
1 - Restrict firmly the number of programmes watched, or, if you are resolute enough, get rid of the TV set altogether. Or put it away and use it only for very special occasions.
2 - Offer alternative activities of a creative sort, e.g. crafts, drawing and painting, pets, various hobbies, sports, music, fork dancing, nature studies, gardening.
3 - Encourage reading of well-written books (classics). Read aloud to little ones.
4 - Aim at a positive and warm family life, interesting mealtimes, bedtime stories, singing, nursery rhymes, etc.
5 - Try to find friends who think the same way and help each other, e.g. organising children's parties together.
Television: An Occasion of Sin? - By a Catholic Bishop
“A child came to confession one day and accused himself of having serious temptations against the angelical virtue, perhaps even of having given in, by thoughts and, who knows, maybe in actions.
However, the priest sought the cause of such a misfortune: "So, do you have television at home?" he asked. The child had to admit it and that he did watch the cursed box, sometimes behind his parents' back, sometimes with them, as a family, and that was the cause of his temptations.
The priest gave the unfortunate and sorrowful child the holy absolution, but could he give it to his parents?
Dear Christian parents, are you CONSCIOUS of your terrible responsibility? Do you realize that due to the weakness of accepting and of keeping at home that tool, a source of corruption of minds and souls, you are the cause of unsuspected damages to innocent souls? Because of your cowardice, souls, tender and pure, are stained by the infamous sin? These children will stand up at the last judgment and will accuse you of having been the cause of their damnation....
Let us remember the Saviour's grave words: "He that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt.XVIII,6).
Do you understand, by this sad example, what is an occasion of sin? Our catechism teaches us that we must avoid not only sin, but also the occasion of sin and that it is as grievous to put ourselves (or to put others) in the occasion of sin as it is to commit the sin itself, when we know by experience that we will fall into that sin. (...).
Let us suppress courageously all the occasions of sin for ourselves and for those under our care. Let us determine at this time to get rid of the dirty box. Give it back to your dealer and let there be no more mention of it. Instead, you should re-establish the nice family oratory, you should enthrone the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and that of Our Blessed Lady. And long live Jesus Who will have freed you from a nasty slavery!”
Examination of conscience for Catholic Parents:
Have you voluntarily exposed yourself to the occasion of sin by sinful curiosity, by watching impure movies, or indecent plays or videos?
Have you listened with willful pleasure to immodest language on TV?
Have you harmed anyone's soul by giving scandal, destroying this soul by bad example?
Have you, by your wicked words, deeds or bad example, ruined innocent children?
Have you exposed your children to impure temptations resulting from watching TV?
Have you kept a TV in your home knowing it is an occasion of sin for you and your children?
Have you allowed your children to watch TV, especially without your knowledge and consent?
Importance and Power of Motion Pictures:
As long ago as 1936, Pope Pius XI, warned of the dangers of the cinema. "It admits of no discussion that the motion picture has achieved these last years a position of universal importance among modern means of diversion. There is no need to point out the fact that millions of people go to the motion pictures every day; that motion picture theatres are being viewed in ever increasing number in civilized and semi-civilized countries; that the motion picture has become the most popular form of diversion which is offered for the leisure moment not only of the rich but of all classes of society.
At the same time, there does not exist today a means of influencing the masses more potent than the cinema. The reason for this is to be sought in the very nature of the motion pictures projected upon the screen, in their popularity and in the circumstances which accompany them.
The power of the motion picture consists in this, that it speaks by means of vivid and concrete imagery which the mind takes in with enjoyment and without fatigue. Even the crudest and most primitive minds which have neither the capacity nor the desire to make the efforts necessary for abstraction or deductive reasoning are captivated by the cinema. In place of the effort which reading or listening demands, there is the continued pleasure of a succession of concrete and, so to speak, living pictures.
(...) Since then the cinema, being like the school of life itself, which, for good or for evil, teaches the majority of men more effectively than abstract reasoning, it must be elevated to conformity with the aims of a Christian conscience and saved from depraving and demoralizing effects.
; they seduce young people along the ways of evil by glorifying the passions; they show life under a false light; they cloud ideals; they destroy pure love, respect for marriage, affection for the family. They are capable also of creating prejudices among individuals and misunderstandings among nations, among social classes, among entire races. Everyone knows what damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. They are
The motion picture is viewed by people who are seated in a dark theatre and whose faculties, mental, physical and often spiritual, are relaxed. One does not need to go far in search of these theatres: they are close to the home, to the Church and to the school and they thus bring the cinema into the very centre of popular life.
Moreover, the acting out of the plot is done by men and women selected for their artistic ability and for all those natural gifts and the employment of those expedients which can become, for youth particularly, instruments of seduction. Further, the motion picture has enlisted in its service luxurious appointments, pleasing music, the vigour of realism, every form of whim and fancy. For this very reason, it attracts and fascinates particularly the young, the adolescent and even the child. Thus at the very age when the moral sense is being formed and when the notions and sentiments of justice and rectitude, of duty and obligation and of ideals of life are being developed, the motion picture with its direct propaganda assumes a position of commanding influence.
It is unfortunate that, in the present state of affairs, this influence is frequently exerted for evil. So much so that when one thinks of the havoc wrought in the souls of youth and of childhood, of the loss of innocence so often suffered in the motion picture theatres, there comes to mind the terrible condemnation pronounced by Our Lord upon the corruptors of little ones: "whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones who believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill stone be hanged about his neck and that he be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matt. XVIII, 6).
Pope Pius XI: Encyclical Vigilanti Cura, June 29, 1936
The Dangers of Television:
"But television, besides the element it shares in common with the other two inventions We have spoken of for the spreading of information, has a power and efficacy of its own. Through the medium of television viewers are enabled to see and hear far-distant events at the very moment at which they are taking place and in this way the illusion is created that they are actually present and taking part in them. This sense of intimacy is greatly enhanced by the home surroundings.
The special power which television has of giving pleasure within the family circle is to be reckoned its most important feature (...). If there is any truth at all in that text: 'a little leaven currupteth the whole lump' and if the physical development of young people can be arrested by an infectious germ and prevented from reaching full maturity, how much more havoc can be wrought upon the nerve-centres of their religious life by some insidious element in their education sapping their moral vitality! It is a matter of common experience that children are frequently able to resist the violent onset of diseases in the world at large, whereas they have no strength to avoid the disease that is latent in the home. It is wrong, therefore, to endanger in any way the sanctity of the home and the Church who as her right and duty demand, has always striven with all her power to prevent these sacred portals from being violated under any pretext by the evils television shows.
Unless wise counsels exert an immediate restraining influence on the use of this art, the damage will be done; a damage which will affect not merely individuals, but the whole of human society - and indeed it is not an easy matter to assess the amount of damage that may already have been caused."
Pope Pius XII: Encyclical Miranda Prorsus,
(Sept. 8, 1957)
+JMJ+
Saint Michael, defend us in battle!
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