Monday, June 16, 2008

Has It Been Thirty Seconds?

Scientific studies have shown conclusively that within thirty seconds of watching television, a viewer enters a measurable trancelike state. This allows the material being shown to bypass the critical faculty so that images and ideas are absorbed by the mind without conscious reflection.

--Michael D. O'Brien, A Landscape With Dragons

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm struggling with reconciling how much screen time my kids should have....enough so that they're considered educated but not so much that they are considered dull and stupid. Any thoughts?

Katie said...

I struggle with deciding how much screen time to let my kids have too, Angela-- not just TV, but also computers. I don't have any answers. At this point, we allow them to have thirty minutes of computer time after their work for the day has been done (schoolwork and chores). We generally save TV for weekend evenings and sick days, unless we have an educational dvd we want to watch. And unless dh has a sporting event he wants to watch on a weekday evening.

I guess a helpful measuring stick would be whether they are attentive, thoughtful children or not. If they are thoughtless and distractible, the screen time certainly isn't helping.

Katie said...

Oops. I meant to say that we allow the kids to have thirty minutes of supervised Internet time after their work for the day is finished. We allow them to play on Paint or Word any time. We don't have too many games on our computers, so they mainly play games while they are online.

Katie said...

:sigh: I mean we allow them to play on Paint or Word as much as they like after their work is finished.

It's early and I'm not thinking straight yet. ;o)