This Is Your Brain on Television by Amy Hornblas, UnderstandMedia.com Contributor
This adds up to more than 1/6 of a person’s life, and more than 2 months of every year.
If the person lives to be 60, TV viewing would come to more than 10 years without sleeping!
Many parents and caregivers are frustrated with what is on TV. The violence, bullying, and encouragement to buy things seems to get worse by the year. (Not to mention video games!) Then there are others who are used to all the violence and sales pitches and don’t seem to notice them at all. Everyone seems to agree that television could be a lot better than it is. Should we be concerned about the content that is coming over the airwaves? What is going on in our brains while we watch TV?
Being sedentary for long hours is not healthy for young people because they have so much growing to do in such a short time. TV keeps kids from moving around, interacting with others, and touching the real world. Wiggling and giggling is very important work for young human brains, and our brains won’t develop properly unless we get this exercise often while we are young. Time spent watching TV (or other screens such as video games and computers) keeps young brains from interacting with the real world.
Young brains also interpret information from the screen differently. Our brains spend the first years of life wiring their neural pathways to match the environment they are born into. If the world they see is one where cartoon heroes use violence to battle “bad guys,” then that is the environment their impressionable brains are learning about.
the question is, what is it teaching?
-Nicholas Johnson
Research has shown that young brains believe that what they are watching on the screen is real. Until about the time we learn to read our brains do not have the experience to fully understand the subtle differences between reality and fantasy. This is why a young child can believe in Santa Claus easily while an older child or adult finds it more difficult. Older brains have experience that helps them think critically about a story and compare it to what they know about the real world. This combination of believing what they see on the screen and forming their brains to adapt to that world is what makes young brains so vulnerable to the influence of television and other screens. To them, the role models on the screen are alive and accurate.
Since we are social creatures, our brains consider the people on the screen as role models. As a violence prevention educator and victim’s advocate, I am concerned about the way that most TV shows, movies, and video games normalize violence and bullying. Most media violence is accompanied by humor, so as young children watch they learn to laugh at what are in real life painful and traumatic events. This early “wiring” of our brains can influence how we understand and react to the world throughout the rest our lives. Neurons that fire together, wire together. As our brains watch humorous, exciting, and entertaining violence on the screen, we learn to associate violence with feelings of pleasure.
It may seem normal to you, but watching pictures on a TV or movie screen is a new thing for human brains. Our brains have been the size and shape they are today for about a million years. For all that time, if we saw or heard something it meant we were near enough to see or hear it in person for ourselves. Until the 1800’s when the photograph and phonograph were invented, there was no way to take a picture or sound from real life and send it somewhere else. The invention of recorders, photographs, and movies throughout the 1800’s and 1900’s was the first time our brains had ever seen and heard life from another time or place. Watching moving pictures and sounds from another time and place is a relatively new thing for our brains and we are still adapting to it.
The most primitive part of our brain is our reptilian or core brain. No matter how old we are, our primitive brain will react to the TV screen as if the action on it is real. This part of our brains cannot think abstractly and therefore cannot understand how a TV works. This is why our heart beat will increase, muscles will tense, and we will have an emotional response to the action on the screen no matter how old we are. Our primitive brain thinks the action on the screen is real and is in the room with us. Seeing is believing. This is one reason why older brains are also vulnerable to being influenced by television.
Our primitive brains are always on alert for danger, food, and mating opportunities; we will feel compelled to watch such content out of a need for survival. Using a lot of violence and danger (physical and emotional), food, and sexual excitement to hold our attention are the oldest tricks in the book, and the media producers use these tricks on purpose. In the United States most of the media we watch is produced for commercial purposes. The more eyes there are on the screen, the more money the producers can charge for the advertising time. This means that the main objective of most of the media produced is to hold our attention in order to sell advertising time for the most profit possible. Holding our eyes on the screen is the main objective, not the content.
Try this exercise. Watch some mainstream television and count how many times your primitive brain is being alerted by the sights and sounds. (Violence and danger, sudden sounds and movements of the camera angle, zooming in and out so that you feel your space is being invaded, food and beverages, and attractive people.) You’ll soon notice that commercial television programming is full of these elements which, unnecessary to the plot or subject matter, keep our eyes on the screen. Every single image and sound is carefully constructed; nothing is an accident.
We are also using the other parts of our brains while we watch TV. Can our logical, human, thinking brain help protect us from being influenced by the screen? Not always. Television feeds our brains between 30 and 60 pictures a second, and the camera angle changes every few seconds on most channels. Our thinking brain works slowly and can have trouble keeping up with the fast pace of the pictures. This can make it very difficult for our thinking brain to stay awake and think critically. Have you ever wanted to comment on something you saw on TV, but by the time the scene finished you couldn’t remember what it was you wanted to say? As our primitive brains are being pulled in by the “reality” of what we are seeing, our thinking brains tend to suspend judgment and believe our senses instead.
What does it mean to view screen media critically? We can discover what our brains are learning by considering the following questions:
• Who made this TV show, movie, or video game and why did they make it?
Most of the media produced in this country is made for profit. Entertaining us is just a reason to get us to watch so that the advertising time will be worth more money. Keeping ourselves aware of this fact can help us better understand the producers’ content choices.
There is a growing amount of media which is not made for commercial purposes, and it is important for our thinking brains to understand the difference. For example, documentaries are often made to share a perspective, while artistic productions are often made to inspire us, and educational shows are made to share information. It is always useful to consider who the producers are and what stake they may have in shaping our understanding of the issue.
Comparing what we are viewing with information from other sources can help us determine what to believe and how to respond. Understanding the motives of the producers can help us evaluate the relevance of what we are viewing.
• What actions and values are being role modeled?
Asking ourselves what is being role modeled by all the characters on the screen can help us to consider the weight of all the visual images. How much time is spent showing negative behaviors? Even if the “moral” of the story is a positive one, our primitive brains are learning from all the action on the screen. Becoming aware of the negative role models and how our brains learn from them can be helpful in making decisions about what to watch and how to watch it. “Morals” of the story are only understood in our thinking brains, and we need time to process these and mull them over for them to have any impact at all. Discussing the story with others can help increase our critical thinking around it. Is there ample time to do this during commercial breaks?
• How would these actions and values work in real life?
Finally, try comparing the results of the actions and values of the characters on the screen with what might happen in real life if we were to do those things. For example, sometimes a show or movie has realistic violence, and is meant to make viewers more aware of the true effects of violence and abuse. A lot of the violence and bullying on the screen is not realistic, however. Most screen violence is exciting or funny to watch. The story often fails to include the ripple effect that the actions and values would have on the victims, their loved ones, the community, as well as the long-term impacts committing violence can have on the perpetrators themselves. Keeping track of the many differences between screen life and real life can help our brains detach from the messages on the screen.
People’s impressions of reality are being influenced by what they see on the screens they watch. While violence is a real concern that must be addressed, most children in this country live relatively safe lives. If they do experience violence, abuse, or bullying, the prevalence of it on television only confirms their belief that what they are experiencing is normal. While too many people are impacted by violence every day, it is not the most urgent problem we face. Many people are surprised when they learn that poverty kills 1000 children every hour on this planet. How often do you see superheroes working to solve this problem? Why isn’t this problem addressed daily on the evening news and other TV shows, the way that violence is? How does this disparity in coverage effect our understanding of the world we live in?
Imagine if the airwaves were used to spread understanding and encourage real solutions to the problems we face. What would that teach young brains? Imagine if you turned on the television and saw more real people like yourself. Imagine what you’d like to see more of on TV, and then stand up for your vision. The airwaves belong to us and are supposed to serve our interests.
The world we live in today has many challenges, and we will need help from everyone’s active brain in order to make the world a safer and happier place. Hands-on experience interacting with the real world is just what young brains need to grow healthy and strong. It is said that Albert Einstein grew his strong brain by playing in the mud. Mud has a lot to teach our brains about how the real world works. Before we fill our brains with TV fantasies, let’s first make sure our feet- and brains- are planted firmly in the mud.
