TV watch

Lutheran, The, Nov 1999 by Romine, Lind

Seeing how your kids look at the screen helps teach them to be media-wise

IT WAS EASY to enlist my kids'cooperation when I asked them to watch TV with me for a magazine article I was writing. The hard part was facing the truth about what that exercise taught us: Were a pretty typical American family of couch potatoes.

But there is hope, according to the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family. The nonprofit organization's mission is to maximize the benefits and minimize the harm of media on children and families through research, education and advocacy. The institute created a resource kit to help teach parents, educators and community leaders about the power of television and such other pervasive media influences as the Internet, video games and music.

After pouring over the massive MediaWise resource kit-a packet with enough easy-to-read brochures, quizzes, handouts and resource lists and leader's guide for a four-week classroom curiculum-1 zeroed in on an activity.

Using my two boys and two friends as willing guinea pigs, we sat in front of the tube one Sunday after church and tackled the "Jolts & Tricks" lesson.

Jolts and tricks, the institute says, are the subliminal techniques advertisers and other creators of media use to influence our emotions, attitudes and behaviors. Jolts are emotional hot buttons that include depictions or references to violence, sex, fear, humor and the sense of belonging. Tricks are techniques such as graphics and special effects, music and volume, pacing and camera angles that are geared toward grabbing viewers' attention and sustaining it.

After explaining these basic terms to my impromptu panel, we watched the 15-minute "Jolts & Tricks" introductory video, which shares these statistics:

- Children are bombarded with 1.2 million advertising messages yearly in all forms of print and electronic media.

- Children in poverty watch the most TV.

- Children spend more time watching TV than any other activity of their waking lives.

- By the time our children graduate from high school, they will have spent twice as much time in front of the TV as in the classroom.

Appalled at these trends to which we, as a family, have contributed, I resolved to educate my sons. Besides, with school starting it seemed a perfect time to mend our ways. Yet how to wean the boys off a TV diet of The Simpsons, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and King of the Hill?

I began to realize it wouldn't be easy as we watched the video, narrated by the institute's executive director, Michael Walsh. The brain has billions of electrical networks that allow us to think and feel, the institute's research says. Based on experience, various neural connections are made, while others are not.

Emotion is critical because it motivates behavior. That's why TV tries so hard to get our attention. Once engaged, we're more likely to act-- whether it's by buying products advertised in commercials or mimicking behaviors depicted in TV shows, such as violence, disrespect or sarcasm.

While aimed primarily at adult educators, the informative video does a thorough job of explaining with simplicity the complex neurological processes that occur when we watch TV shows and commercials.

Neural networks are so important because they are the basis of vision, language-even our imagination. Most startling to me, as a parent, is the fact that although we continue to develop neural networks throughout our lives, this process peaks at age 7. So whether it's Barney, Big Bird or the Teletubbies, who and what our toddlers and preschoolers watch has a profound impact on their development.

Children learn by copying what they see and hear. Walsh contends that one of the most powerful influences affecting the development of kids' brains today is TV. He says, "The goal of TV isn't to teach. The primary goal of TV is to deliver eyeballs to advertisers."

And how. My guinea pigs became bored and fidgety during the straight talk about brain activity. But each time the video cut to a clip of a catchy commercial or action-oriented show, they were instantly (however fleetingly) riveted, as if afraid they might miss something good. Or, in this case, bad.

The real test of our assignment came in the second half of the lesson, in which we watched a TV program and each listed every occurrence of a jolt or a trick that we detected.

Pencils in hand? Eyes glued to the 27-inch Zenith that dominates our humble family room, we punched the remote until it landed on Futurama, an animated Fox-TV comedy.

That the show was a rerun didn't deter my excited brood. Justin, my 10-- year-old, perked up at the chiming sounds of the theme music and couldn't suppress a few dance moves. His best friend, David, giggled and smiled, then suddenly became serious as he recognized the first trick-music. He marked his chart. His 10-year-old neural connectors worked overtime as he continued to check his sheet for clues.

As the Futurama characters experimented with a gruesome looking "suicide machine" containing various weapons of self-destruction, the kids' eyes were fixed in awe. "Cool! Weapons!" I could imagine their brains telling them.