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Guided by TV, today's kids are exposed to more information about the world around them than any other generation in history. But are they smarter for it? Many teachers and psychologists argue that TV is largely to blame for the decline in reading skills and school performance. In his studies of children at Yale, psychologist Jerome Singer found that kids who are heavy TV watchers tend to be less well informed, more restless and poorer students. The frenetic pace of TV, moreover, has seeped into the classroom. "A teacher who is going into a lengthy explanation of an arithmetic problem will begin to lose the audience after a while," says Singer. "Children are expecting some kind of show." Even the much beloved Sesame Street has been criticized for reinforcing the TV-inspired notion that education must be fast paced and entertaining. Says Neil Postman, communications professor at New York ) University and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: "Sesame Street makes kids like school only if school is like Sesame Street."
Televised violence may also be having an effect on youngsters. Singer's research has shown that prolonged viewing by children of violent programs is associated with more aggressive behavior, such as getting into fights and disrupting the play of others. (A link between TV and violent crime, however, has not been clearly established.) Other studies suggest that TV viewing can dampen kids' imagination. Patricia Marks Greenfield, a professor of psychology at UCLA, conducted experiments in which several groups of children were asked to tell a story about the Smurfs. Those who were shown a Smurfs TV cartoon beforehand were less "creative" in their storytelling than kids who first played an unrelated connect-the-dots game.
But the evidence is flimsy for many popular complaints about TV. In a 1988 report co-authored for the U.S. Department of Education, Daniel Anderson, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, found no convincing evidence that TV has a "mesmerizing effect" on children, overstimulates them or reduces their attention span. In fact, the report asserted, TV may actually increase attention-focusing capabilities.
Nor, contrary to many parents' fears, have the new video technologies made matters worse. Small children who repeatedly watch their favorite cassettes are, psychologists point out, behaving no differently from toddlers who want their favorite story read to them over and over. (The VCR may actually give parents more control over their kids' viewing.) Video games may distress adults with their addictive potential, but researchers have found no exceptional harm in them -- and even some possible benefits, like improving hand-eye coordination.
Yet TV may be effecting a more profound, if less widely recognized, change in the whole concept of growing up. Before the advent of television, when print was the predominant form of mass communication, parents and teachers were able to control just what and when children learned about the world outside. With TV, kids are plunged into that world almost instantly.