As a general rule, I don’t trust any advocacy group with the words “Family”, “Parents,” or “Common Sense” in the title, because it usually translates out to “holier-than-thou people banding together to try and order you around.” So, you can imagine how skeptical I am of Common Sense Media’s latest report that television is brainwashing our children, which can be aptly summed up by Gob Bluth. Finally realized that nobody cares what you think about the Internet or video games, guys?
To be fair, studies conducted by actual scientists, instead of fundamentalists and/or hippies, have concluded that kids under two shouldn’t watch TV at all and kids over two should really cut down on their TV viewing. Notice, however, that the studies didn’t fulminate on the evil of television programming: the problem is essentially that it distracts kids from brain-building activities like playing and vocalizing, and that the study concluded that kids over two can get some benefit from educational programming.
This, of course, hasn’t stopped Common Sense Media from slapping together a study about how kids today don’t read and watch too much consarned TV and it’s making them stupid. Of course, how this reconciles with the fact that US literacy hovers at around 99% and IQ scores are showing kids are getting smarter with each passing generation is something that Common Sense Media can’t be expected to explain. It’s probably the Internet’s fault.
