Preacher's Study Notes 1990
Now there are very few preachers without T.V. sets in their homes (I know of only two) and rather little is said about it. It is fair to say that as a group we have accepted T.V. What is this medium that we have accepted? Every type of cursing is allowed, nudity is commonplace, explicit sex is frequent and 89% of the suggestive situations shown are between unmarried couples. Some of the nation’s favorite programs show children defying their parents. Violence has proceeded to gruesome levels, and perversities are regularly presented in favorable lights. What can we make of the fact that we opposed T.V. when it was mild and accepted it when it became putrid?
An Outline of the Study
A. How much TV, is watched and who watches it?
B. What does the research show about the effects?
C. What are the mental mechanisms by which TV. works’?
D. How does this affect the conscience-building process in children?
E. What can we do about the situation?
Who Watches TV and How Much?
A. The introduction comes early — the avenge six month-old infant spends 1.5 hours daily in front of a T.V. set in the arms of its caretakers.
1. It is not surprising that by age thee, American children have become purposeful T.V. consumers with their own favorite shows — an average of 2 hours daily.
2. Consumption grows to about age 12 and peaks at an average of 4 hours daily.
3. Sixteen year olds average 3.5 hours daily and adults 2.5 hours.
4. These are averages. Not every adolescent watches 4 hours every day. They may watch 2.5 hours through the week and 8 hours on Saturdays and Sundays.
5. These same basic patterns hold for Canada, Western Europe, and Australia. Many of these countries use much U.S. programming.
Effect on the Family Unit
B. There is not much talk about it, but it may be the most serious effect of all. Sixty percent of families acknowledge they changed their sleeping patterns after the introduction of TV.
1. 55% say they altered the way meals are served.
2. 78% of families acknowledge using T.V. as an electronic baby-sitter.
3. An unexpected result: Water systems in some large metropolitan areas have had to be redesigned to accommodate massive drops in pressure caused by flushing toilets during prime-time commercials.
4. What activities do families say suffered most?
a. Social activities away from home, i.e. church attendance, children’s school activities, excreta.
b. Sleep. Sleep deprivation is now considered a major health problem.
c. Conversation, as required to do the teaching of children described in Deuteronomy 6:6.
d. Reading. As in reading the Bible or anything else.
5. Compared to the automobile.
a. Early supporters of television said similar complaints were made against the automobile.
b. Studies show that folks who own automobiles spend only 6% more time traveling than those who do not.
6. No invention in modern times has altered the structure and function of the family in ways comparable to T.V.
Studies of Violence
C. Violence has been the principal subject of study. The reasons for this will be explained later when I discuss pornography.
1. Because the effect of televised violence on children and youth has been studied 30 years there are now literally hundreds of studies—I estimate between 600 and 1,000 — and they show clearly and undeniably the damaging effects of T.V. violence on young people.
2. Some of the early studies purported to show no connection between how much and what kind of T.V. children watched and their behavior. By now hardly anyone would deny that the current T.V. diet of most children does have serious and damaging effects.
3. There are probably two reasons some of the early studies purported to show “no effect”:
a. Science is not set up to prove things; it is set up to disprove. Whether the study is about the effect of capital punishment on crime or caffeine on heart disease, the way science works is that it will take the proposition and try to disprove it. If after several attempts, it cannot be disproved, then researchers will gradually and reluctantly accept it. Especially, in early studies the problem is apt to be poor methods of study. For that reason, if good logic suggests something to be harmful, one should not place much confidence in one or few studies that say it isn’t.
b. The second reason some early studies claimed no effect is that they were commissioned by the broadcasting networks. They were simply biased, or in a few cases positive findings were deliberately suppressed. This just proves again, that it is not safe to appoint the fox the guardian of the chicken house.
Samples of Studies in Violence
There are two main types. For every example I give there are literally dozens, sometimes hundreds of others of the same type. Social science journals now will hardly take another study or publication unless it has some unique aspect.
A. Laboratory studies.
1. Heller and Polsky—Commissioned and paid for by ABC.
a. Divided school aged children in two groups and showed one group repeated versions of aggressive cartoons; the other group were shown nonaggressive materials.
b. Afterward, trained observers watched the children at play and rated their levels of aggression toward other children with a standardized rating scale known as the Feshbach method.
c. They found statistically significant increases in a variety of aggressive behaviors, i.e. hitting, shoving, as well as verbal aggressions and hostile attitudes.
2. Drahman and Thomas’ Series of “Hardening Children” experiments.
a. Child Growth and Development experts have been worried for years about what is described as vanishing childhood. By this they mean that the period in a child’s life when he thinks innocently and trustingly appears to he getting shorter and shorter.
b. Christians should be concerned about this also. This was the subject of Solomon’s statement in Eccelesiastes 12:1, “Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”
c. Drabman and Thomas showed one group of 3rd and 4th graders aggressive cowboy films while another group continued the regular school program.
d. After the exposure, one by one the children from both groups were taken for the experimental test. In a room with a T.V. monitor, they were told their job was to watch the two children that they could see playing on the monitor. They were also told that if the children should do anything wrong they should use the buzzer to call an adult who was working nearby. What the children were actually seeing was a video film of two child actors who play nicely at first but gradually became more and more violent. Finally they appeared to hit each other and wreck the camera.
e. The real object was to find out how much violence the two groups of children thought was all right.
f. The results were dramatic. 60% of the nonexposed children called for help as soon as the filmed children started arguing loudly and wrecking each other’s toys. Only 17% of the exposed children did so.
g. Drabman and Thomas repeated the study twice with similar results.
3. Bryant, Carveth, and Brown—The Cultivation of Expectation of Violence.
a. Ninety men, over a six week period, agreed to watch no television or a great deal of specified programs. (They were told their job was to analyze content.) One group watched no T.V. One group watched twenty-eight hours per week of violent programs in which the good guy won, The other group watched 28 hours of violence in which the good guy lost. They called these situations:
2) Violence with justice.
3) Violence with injustice.
b. Subjects were tested for baselines of anxiety and hostile attitudes before the experiment.
c. At the end, the three groups were tested for anxiety and for perceived likelihood of being a victim of violence.
d. Again, the results were dramatic and a perfect progression—no television, violence with justice, violence with injustice.
4. Some authorities reject laboratory experiments. They say the subjects are likely to know they are in an experiment and to react differently than they would in real life. These authorities say studies in natural settings are more valuable.
Field Experiments in Violence
A. The Joy, Kimball, and Zabrack Study of Three Canadian Towns.
1. A town in the Canadian mountains that had no television until 1974,
2. Another Canadian town of similar size that had only one channel — CBS. (From having lived in Cape Town I can confirm that one channel will restrict your viewing.)
3. A third town that received many channels including U.S. channels. They referred to these towns as Notel, Unitel, arid Multitel.
4. Results:
a. Violence among children and youth, according to several ratings, was highest in Multitel, next highest in Unitel, and lowest in Notel.
b. However, two years after introduction of television in Notel, childhood violence matched that of Unitel.
B. Belson’s (CBS) Study.
1. In an eight-year study that cost $300,000 Belson studied 1500 adolescents in London.
2. He first collected records of how much T.V. these adolescents consumed. Then he collected information from families, friends, and court records about the types of violence low consumers, medium consumers, and high consumers committed.
3. Belson concluded that even for serious offenses such as stealing and inflicting bodily harm, there was “very strong evidence that heavy T.V. viewing was a real contributing factor.”
4. Even though this is one of the largest studies ever done, and colleagues of Belson (usually die harshest critics) accepted it as a sound, major study. CBS decided the evidence was inconclusive and continued with their regular programming.
C. Huesmann’s Twenty-two year follow-up.
1. In the 1960’s Huesmann and his associates began collecting data on 211 boys of ages 8 and 9.
2. They collected T.V. viewing information from mothers and aggression information from classmates (i.e. “write down the name of the kids in your class who would be most likely to hit someone,” etc. cetera).
3. Boys whose mothers said they watched violent programs were the ones class-mates said would hit someone.
4. At this point, students who read that study would be apt to say “What’s new?”
5. Here’s what’s new. Twenty-two years later Huesmann went back and found most of those subjects when they were ages 30 and 31.
6. High watchers of violent T.V. at age 8 were five times more likely to have committed criminal acts by age 30 than low watchers.7. Huesmann concluded: “Aggressive habits seem to be learned early and once established are resistant to change. Early television habits are, in fact, correlated with adult criminality.”
D. The Argument: Does watching T.V. violence produce violence in young people or do violent young people watch violent T.V.? The answer seems to be both, a vicious cycle.
1. How does this type of influence to violence prepare young people to assume such Christian characteristics as the following:
a. 2 Timothy 2:24, “the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men.”
b. James 3:17, “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits.”
The Effect of Sexually Explicit T.V.
A. This aspect of television has not been studied as long or as much as violence. There are two reasons for this deficit:
1. Until the late 1970’s there was little sexually oriented material on T.V. When T.V. first appeared, the word “pregnant” could not be spoken on the airways.
a. One researcher said that until 1977, T.V. seemed to assume that even married couples lived in separate bedrooms.
b. The turning point was the introduction of the sitcom “Soap.” Now, not only explicit material but all forms of perversions are openly displayed, usually in a favorable light.
2. The second reason is that many researchers did not believe that sexual material alone was harmful. (This view changed with the advent of pornography.) Under this assumption in the 1960’s, the avant-garde were fond of saying “make love, not war.”
Leading Studies in Televised Pornography
A. One of the leading students of the effects of televised pornography is Edward Donnerstein. Donnerstein studied large numbers of college-aged men in three settings: (The men did not know why they were being studied.)
1. Over a period of several days, one group watched large numbers of neural films, i.e. no sex or violence.
2. A second group watched explicitly erotic but nonviolent films.
3. A third group watched films that combined sex with violence.
B. After the films the men completed questionnaires about their attitudes toward women, rape, and toward what they might do in certain male-female situations.
1. The sexual but nonviolent films produced a significant negative effect in the attitudes of men toward women. It increased how far they said they would push a companion to get what they want, and it significantly lessened their opinions of the seriousness of forcible rape.
2. While these results were sobering, the results were even stronger for the group that watched the films that combined pornography with violence. Some of this group were willing to allow rapists to go free with practically no punishment.
3. How does this fit with Paul’s instruction to young men, in I Timothy 5:1, to treat young women as sisters with absolute purity? How does it prepare them to “love their wives as their own bodies”? Ephesians 5:28.
C. Donnerstein wanted to know if the men would actually carry through with harmful behavior they projected toward women.
1. In a different side of the experiment, he told the men that he was studying the effect of punishing wrong answers on learning.
2. Working with actresses, he had the men, one by one, to turn the dials to give what they thought were actual electric shocks when the women gave wrong answers.
3. The results were chilling. The men from the sex only film gave high shocks. The men from the sex and violence group gave dangerously high shocks. The group that watched neutral films were significantly more gentle than either of the other groups.
D. Donnerstein concluded: “Far from being innocuous, frequent exposure to pornography appears to cultivate extremely negative attitudes toward women.” Is there really any mystery about why the incidence of forcible rape has jumped dramatically in recent years?
E. Broadcasters have consistently argued that they do not mold public values — that they only reflect them.
1. In a small way this is true, but in the most meaningful way it is absolutely false.
2. Broadcasters do not usually introduce totally new ideas to the public. What they do is take the practices of a small minority and exploit their novelty. In so doing they make these practices appear to be much more widespread than they are, Thus, they significantly hasten the spread of negative values.
3. Heavy TV. viewers, in surveys, consistently overestimate:
a. How much divorce there is in society,
b. How much premarital sex — 89% of all suggestive scenes on T.V. are between unmarried persons.
c. How much marital infidelity — any wonder?
4. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable here because of their need to fit in.
5. Do you remember when sex education in schools was justified on the basis of sexual misinformation supposedly given by parents? Researchers are now concerned about what I consider a much more serious type of misinformation --- done by the media.
The Effects of Advertisements on Children
A. There is good evidence that the content of television programs is not their only source of negative effects. The commercials themselves may be about as bad.
1. T.V. advertising to children is big business; children’s commercials are scientifically researched, attractively designed, musically scored, and effective!
2. Mattel toy company launched a campaign in 1955 that multiplied their sales 2400 percent almost overnight.
B. Whether commercials intend to do it or not, several studies have found that advertisements directed toward children promote negative attitudes toward parents and parent-child conflicts.
1. Goldberg and Gorn showed one group of children a commercial about a toy. The other group did not see it. Then they showed a picture of the toy, a child, and a father to all children. They were told that the child wanted the toy but the father would not buy it. They were then asked if the child would still want to play with his father. The majority of the commercial viewers said “no”; the majority of the nonviewers said “yes”.
2. Atkin took reports from parents and, in another study, actually observed shopping situations and found that 65% of parent refusals to buy advertised products, i.e. cereals and toys, resulted in observable parent- child conflicts.
3. Other studies show that children say they would prefer to play with a “mean boy” with an advertised toy than a “nice boy” without it.
C. There has been a lot of speculation about how and why commercials influence children in these ways. Two factors seem involved:
1. Young children listen very well to commercials. Studies show that older children’s attention drops dramatically during commercials, but young children’s attention actually increases.
2. The second factor is that young children are not able to evaluate the intent of television commercials. In their young, innocent minds they believe the commercial is telling them something for their benefit. Thus, when parents refuse to buy advertised products, children feel parents are depriving them of something good.
Influences Children
Children’s Inability to Distinguish Fact from Fantasy
A. Many adults dismiss the effects of TV. as “just fantasy.”
1. It is true that adults can soften the impact of visual images by how they tell themselves to interpret them, i.e. through cognitive input.
2. There is plenty of evidence that adults cannot do this with complete effectiveness. Witness the frightening effect of horror films.
B. But children cannot distinguish fact from fantasy at all until about five years of age. Then, for another two or three years, i.e. until about age eight, their ability to do so is weak or incomplete. Thus, before age five, if children see it, it is real.
1. Recall that children become purposeful T.V. watchers by age 3. Then you know that for 2 or 3 years, before they have the power to interpret them, they are exposed to fictional characters and events that they take as real.
2. You can understand how children might be made to feel by these scenes. Recall the content of programs like Miami Vice and Hill Street Blues. How would you feel if every day when you went out to work you saw four or five people shot, you had to dodge bullets, you witnessed people screaming with pain, et cetera.
3. Before children start to school they are now exposed to many more fictional characters than real ones. And the quality of many of these fictional, but to them real, characters is the worst possible.
4. 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be misled; bad company corrupts good character” (NIV).
5. We would not think of allowing our children to associate with these characters on the streets. Yet, 78% of Americans admit they invite them in to baby-sit their children.
6. One interesting example of children’s inability to understand fantasy is their inability to understand flashbacks, and remembering.
Children’s Inability to Evaluate Intent
A. As adults, if someone wants us to do something that we know will profit them we evaluate that content differently. For example, we look at an advertisement of a cereal differently than objective analysis of its content.
B. Children are not able to make that distinction. Thus, they see programs that the producers say are just entertainment and take it as information about the way the world is. When they sec hour after hour of people beating each other up, when everyone they see on television has been or is getting divorced, when practically everyone they see is involved in adultery, the view of the world they get is severely distorted.
The Greater Power of Visual Images
A. There is evidence that material that is presented with life-like visual images simply hits with harder impact than the spoken word only.
B. Matthew 6:22-23, “The light of the body is the eye: If therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.”
1. “Light” means the lamp which shows the way or, morally, the guiding principles by which one lives.
2. The source of the guiding principles by which one lives is the eye!
C. I recall a poem I learned as a child that illustrates this point: “I would rather see a sermon than to hear one any day. I would rather one would walk with me than merely show the way. The eye is a better pupil and more willing than the ear. Fine council is confusing, but example is always clear.”
D. Jesus said the light of the “body” is the eye. Visual images hit with greater impact on the emotions.
on the Conscience-Building Process
A. For a number of years professionals in the child-care business have been noticing a change in the types of children that are brought to our treatment units.
B. When I first started as a therapist, about a quarter of a century ago (that long?), other than psychotic children, the main types we got were anxious, phobic, or depressed ones. That has dramatically changed. Now the principal ones (again, other than psychotic children) are personality disorders. One feature of these disorders is that something has interfered with the attachment, bonding, and conscience-building processes. Many of these youngsters grow up caring for no one, feeling for no one, i.e. without a conscience.
C. We have long known that the basic structure for the conscience is built in the early years. Specific beliefs and principles begin to be entered into it in adolescence and continue throughout life. But if the structure is not sound, whatever is put into it (taught) may simply “leak out” as water from a bucket with holes in it. Psychologists speak of “superego lacunae” which means holes in the conscience.
D. Paul alluded to this process in I Timothy 3:9 when he spoke of deacons as “holding the mystery of the faith in a good conscience.” The image Paul constructs, according to Ellicott and other Bible scholars, is that of a precious bowl or container and a precious liquid within it. Neither can be used without the other. Again, the container is constructed in early years. A child needs those tender, unhardened years to learn to trust, to be attached to and to feel for other people, which are the bases for the conscience.
E. By contrast we know that sin hardens. Paul said in Hebrews 3:13 “But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you should be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”
F. What I believe is happening is that an early and intense exposure to violence and pornography via T.V. is hardening the nation’s children before their times. Consequently, a very large number will go through life without the inner restraint of a conscience, doing whatever they can get away with, whatever feels good to them.
What Can Be Done About the Problem
A. Diagnosis of a problem is usually easier than cure and that is certainly true in this case. But there are things we can do, as a brotherhood and as individuals and families.
B. As a brotherhood:
1. Let us take care to avoid our earlier mistake of dividing into camps of “those opposed to T.V.” and “those for T.V.” and fighting each other.
2. Instead, let us deal with the matter as a mutual and pervasive problem in which we instruct and support each other in love.
C. As individuals and families:
1. If you and your family have not developed a heavy dependence on T.V., don’t! As parents, do not use T.V. to entertain children and don’t worry about moderate amounts of childhood boredom. Packaged entertainment stifles creativity; boredom helps children develop internal resources for learning and amusement.
2. Parents should deal first with their own T.V. habits. Those who do so serve as role models for their children and make their requests more creditable.
3. As a minimum, get rid of multiple sets, i.e. individual sets in bedrooms.
4. Don’t just throw it out, put something more constructive in its place, i.e. wholesome family activities. Remember Jesus’ lesson (Matthew 12) of the evil spirit that was cast out of his home and returning later found it still empty, he returned and the latter state was worse than the beginning. Older children especially should be included in discussions of the problem and solutions.
5. A family that depends heavily on T.V. should reassess broadly its family life. There are probably factors, such as high father absence, that have allowed the dependence to develop. These should be addressed.
6. Deal with TV. dependence as an addiction, if it is, and it can be. See the symptoms of addictive activities below. An addicted individual:
a. Cannot or does not quit even though he knows the activity is harmful.
b. Spends an inordinate amount of time doing it or thinking about it.
e. Structures life around it, other helpful activities are neglected in favor of it.
A. Television violence affects all children—no serious researcher would deny the validity of that statement.
1. The more they watch, the more they are affected.
2. The more vulnerable they are, the more they are affected:
a. younger children more than older,
b. emotionally disturbed more than emotionally healthy,
c. violent children more than nonviolent,
d. children from broken homes and homes that make no attempt to teach values more than children from solid, intact homes.
3. Children who watch T.V. alone will probably be affected more than those who watch with their parents.
B. Please he aware that we are dealing with averages. I am not saying any individual child who watches T.V. definitely will be affected in the ways described here. I am saying rather that there is a significantly increased likelihood that he will be.
C. I am not saying either that T.V. is the only or total source of negative effects on children. But I, and most other social scientists, believe it is a major one.
7114 W Arbor Trace Dr. #801, Knoxville, TN 37909
No comments:
Post a Comment