How Do You Hug an Electronic Friend?
A recent study by
the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids aged eight to eighteen devote
1,600 minutes per week to watching TV, while the amount of time per week that a
child spends in meaningful conversation with his parents is 3 ½ minutes.
When
I first read these statistics, I was speechless. It took some time to
comprehend that if a child sleeps for eight hours, goes to school for about
eight hours, then does “entertainment media” for the rest, his day is over,
finished, gone. The frightening question came to mind, that if for half of his
waking hours our child is told what to do and think by teachers, and for the
remaining half, is told what to do and think by TV “personalities” and video
gamesters, then when does the love of our life have time to be him or herself?
When does our child have time to be creative or inventive, loving and caring,
active and wild—in short: when does our child have time to be a child? And since it is mostly these characteristics that
distinguish us from turnips, the question arises, when does our child have time
to be truly human?
Once
we grow older, and our work and commute take up ten hours a day, another two
hours we spend doing our chores of shopping, feeding, and cleaning—what SamuelBeckett called, “keeping up premises and appearances,”—five we spend staring
brain-dead at the tube, and for the remaining eight we try to get some sleep,
then when do we have time—or do we ever—to be ourselves? When do we manage to
reflect on our lives, to discuss our dreams and worries with our friends, to
exchange ideas, a joke or just a recipe? When do we have time to raise our
children, love our dear ones, or just lend a helping hand?
For
while it may be true, as so many of us claim, that TV and video games are
really “not so bad,” their true subtle insidiousness lies in what they replace,
what they rob us of: real life.
Unleashing
television on humanity was like crop-dusting our brains with Valium
daily. No aspect of life went untouched: families, friendships, politics, religion,
how we worked, what we ate, what we thought, were all permanently altered.
Families
that once shared interests and concerns, played some simple card game, or board
game together, during which they talked, laughed, expressed their own ideas,
now at best share the same TV. At worst they flee separately to their rooms to
dissolve in front of their own TV set. Friendships and companionships have been
watered down or abandoned. Instead of real flesh-and-blood Eddy next door or
the kid down the hall, our pals have become little flashing lights.
Politicians,
who heaven knows were bad enough before, have mutated into TV personalities,
whose appearance and joviality far outweigh their minds and hearts.
Religion has been changing from quiet contemplation and
prayer in humble churches into loud and belligerent ranting on the Tube.
Television
turned the natural world on its head. It was not just the misleading
advertising based on the proven notion that you can fool most of the people
most of the time, but the programs themselves taught us how much better it is
to open a package and slam it into the microwave, or go out and buy a
ready-made junk-burger, than to actually use our wits and imagination and
create a meal on our own. TV made the natural world in which we once spent our
lives seem inconsequential and dull.
It
also changed the way we think about our work. It glorifies and idolizes every
single-brain-cell occupation from meaty men who kicked, hit, dribbled or
drooled, to skinny women with incomprehensible expressions and identically
retooled boobs and faces. Thus, if only by sheer exclusion, those doing work of
true value to others—the farmer, the craftsman, the fisherman, or the artist
who lived a productive, thoughtful life, were relegated to a quaint history.
TV
invented a new reality and, without a trace of irony, called it that. And we
ate it with a spoon. We actually believed that a handful of people stuck on an
island with a TV crew of fifty, and a thousand pounds of food were real
Survivors. Up to that point it could be termed a stupid farce, but even worse
was the barbarian premise that instead of pulling together as a group, as
members of a society whose aim should be the well being of all, the “winner”
would be the last one who “survived.”
The
slew of reality shows that followed were perhaps less vicious but equally
unreal and even more embarrassing. People thrown together in resorts or on
beaches, where the goal was to destroy an existing relationship, or to form an
artificial new one under spotlights with cameras rolling, precluded any genuine
human relationship and most emotions except for the occasional outburst of
hysteria.
And
believing this to be reality, we began to adopt not only their mode of dress,
but their emotional responses, moral values and even their thoughtless speech.
When kids spend 1,600 minutes a week watching TV and less than 4 minutes
talking to their parents, who can blame them for thinking and sounding less and
less like live people and more and more like “reality” characters. Good thing
it wasn’t the All-Lassie channel or by now they would be barking.
Most
important of all, television told us that our families and friends are
dull, and that our true joy and knowledge come from far away and only from the
anointed few. Simple thousand-year-old traditions like storytelling, singing,
and even gossiping, that had brought people together and allowed them to learn
from each other, to entertain each other, to criticize and discuss, to form
friendships and societies, fell by the wayside, replaced by the solitary,
numbing, antisocial act of watching TV. As Mr. Davis, a college educated,
amicable New Hampshire farmer, put so well, “Neighbors used to visit every
night and talk. But those days are gone. The Tube killed people.”
The
New York-based Roper Organization’s study showed the frightening results. The
single activity that most people look forward to daily is not human contact but
watching television. Even during dinner, one half of population watches
television instead of conversing with family they haven’t seen all day. And in
times of trouble, we rely on TV to cure us; 35 percent of men said they deal
with depression not by talking out or trying to think through their problems,
but by watching television. Most heartbreaking of all, when a group of 4 to 6
year olds were given the chance to spend time with their fathers, 54 percent
chose to watch TV instead.
Some
insist that watching television with others is a social act; compared to watching
television by yourself, perhaps. But compared to talking and sharing feelings
and ideas, compared to live unrehearsed human companionship, sitting in
adjoining chairs watching television is about as socially interactive as
squatting in adjoining stalls and dumping into the same sewer. I remember on
various occasions having a great time talking and laughing at friends’ houses
when someone came up with the idea of catching a favorite show. The
conversation died, the sharing died, the faces all turned numb. You might as
well have dropped a bomb in the room and blown us to the winds, our emotional
distance had become so great.
Still
others insist that television actually gives us a social foundation; something
common to talk about. This is true, but frightening. The bad part is not only
that talking about Paris Hilton numbs the brain, but when we talk about these
inanities, when we spend our time, thoughts and emotions on distant clowns, we
are stealing precious attention and care from our loved ones, or our should-be
loved ones—our family and our friends. It is probably safe to say that the
average TV watcher knows more about the love life of his favorite TV bimbo than
he knows about his children’s, and sadly enough, maybe even thinks about it
more.
And
while our friends and loved ones suffer, we too often stand by idly, but are
crushed with heartbreak when we lose Lady Di.
The sad proof of
TV’s effect came from an expatriate friend at dinner not long ago. He is in his
thirties, witty, pleasant-looking, impeccable education, speaks excellent
Italian, yet he lamented about the loneliness of the Tuscan countryside, or
more particularly about the difficulty of finding himself a wife. He had been
living there for years, fell in with the social circles, both local and
expatriate, was always invited to dinners, always circulating, but had remained
alone. He told us about how depressed and tired he used to be, until he bought
himself a television set. He now no longer feels so “compelled to look,” for he
can “stay home alone and yet not feel lonely.”
This
sums up the insidiousness of television: it acts as every other drug or opiate;
it makes us feel less lonely by making us believe that the face made out of
flickering dots is somehow our friend. Well, it isn’t. It’s worse than an
enemy. If the need really arose, if you really needed someone to make a bowl of
soup or wipe a fevered brow, to lend a hand or a shoulder to cry on, or someone
to lie beside you and hold you in her arms, the enemy may—overcome by human compassion—turn
into a friend or even a lover. But the flickering dots will flicker on
uncaring, whether you live or die.
Perhaps the greatest damage
is that without interaction, discussion, or feedback, only the power of
presentation, we grow to distrust our own opinion, subjugate our instincts and
convictions and actually fool ourselves into believing the most outrageous,
self-serving media ravers.
This
willingness to accept what we are told, to endow with importance the inane and
fake, and most crucial, our willingness to become inactive bystander, watchers,
does not end when we turn off the beast. It lingers. We accept that we are
helpless, so we become helpless. We lose our natural ability to entertain
others and ourselves—a feat most seals and monkeys do with ease—and turn to the
Tube. When enough of us are convinced that we are too dull for company, the
vast entertainment industry is born. And when, through a lack of human contact,
enough of us feel too inadequate to deal with each other, to settle problems
face to face, then the vast legal industry is born, and when we don’t know how
to spend and save, the financial behemoth is born that takes over the world.
And
when enough of us convince ourselves that someone else knows better about how
the world should work, what is right or wrong, what is to be done, then we will
be ready for another a Hitler to lead us.
Yet,
we throw our children—at the earliest of ages—to this electronic wolf. What
happens then is well described in The Washington Post: “Television is the dominant force conveying
attitudes and values for the whole of society. Anyone who has ever watched
television with a child knows firsthand how frighteningly influential the small
screen can be in suggesting not only what to buy but also how to behave and
speak and, indeed, what to think.”
How
TV can affect children’s minds was also reported recently in Business Week. “Researchers found that the branding of food
product packaging with characters such as Dora the Explorer drives preschoolers
to choose higher-calorie, less healthful foods over more nutritious options.
The findings, reported online in Pediatrics, reflect on the food preferences of
4- to 6-year-old boys and girls who found foods tastier when the packaging bore
the likenesses of beloved TV and movie characters.”
If I was mean-spirited, I would call that brainwashing.
So what to do? Turn
it off. It’s possible.
When Candace did
her master’s program at The School of Visual Arts in New York, we lived in a
tiny studio in Chelsea. I wrote part of the day, the rest of the day I was
bored. I went and bought a Sony Trinitron. We hid it in a corner so it would
not be too intrusive. Then we turned it on. It felt like an invasion. It felt
as if a thousand salesmen had marched in through the door. The TV lasted one
night. The next day, I sold the thing and began hanging out in art galleries,
museums and bars.
Last year, my long-time writing cohort moved with her boyfriend from Brooklyn to
Manhattan and decided to skip cable TV. I asked her a few weeks later how life
was without TV. “We look at each other more now. We go out more often to see
friends and new places,” she said. “And we really listen to each other.”
So
turn it off.
After
a few days of barely controllable panic, you will not believe how much free
time you’ll have, what far-ranging thoughts—some utterly antisocial, but very
enjoyable—what interests, what great conversations, what calm, and sense of
control you will feel. You will have reclaimed your life. You will be free.
Free to lead a vibrant, passionate existence, not one broken into tight
half-hour segments, three minute advertising breaks, and weekly time slots but
your own life of wonderfully varied days, new weeks, real seasons, and
unforeseeable, ever-changing, surprising lengths of time.
* * *
A REAL LIFE: Rediscovering the Roots of Our Happiness is available through
W. W. Norton and Amazon.com or wherever books and ebooks are sold.
Stay tuned for a new chapter post next week!
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