Tune in, Tune Out (Obvious Magazine: Premier Issue)

Tune In:

Is Television Your Child's New At-home Parent?

By Marcus Scott

On average, every day tens of thousands of parents leave children home alone in an empty house to run errands, work, or attend social functions. According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, an estimated 40 percent-plus children are left at home at some point in their lives. In a 1944 NBC documentary during the Second World War, the term “Latchkey Kid” orginated, referring to the house or apartment key around a child’s neck. When the war began, thousands of men enlisted into the army, as women found jobs to support their families, which initated newfound feminism in the wake industrialism. Since then, the number of kids left alone have nearly tripled. In fact, the State Department of Education estimated that some 600,000 to 800,000 children in California alone have been harmonized into the latchkey kid label.

In a 2002 United States Census survey, 5.8 million (15 percent) of most children between ages five and 14 years old living with a single-parent mother, care for themselves an average of 6.3 hours per week. Sixty-five percent of these children spend 2 to 9 hours at home alone.

Since its early beginnings as a system able to broadcast, transmit and receive shortwave 48-line images by the use of cathode ray tubes in 1928 to its first demostrations of eclectronic color, TV has become a different animal than it was half a century ago.Today, this simple box set is a pop culture messiah, with just as much influence as some of the oldest religions like that of Islam, Christianity and Judism.

When kids are left alone at home without supervision, all they have to come home to is a television. Odds are they are most likely to neglect homework and reading, and go to the magical box set to play video games, watch music videos and cable or satellite. While some may argue that there is nothing wrong with televison, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry sites children in the US are estimated to watch 3 to 4 hours of television every day, having spent more time viewing TV than they have been in the classroom.

While TV doesn’t pose a threat to some, it may have superpowers that may pose a threat to some children in the most opprobrious ways. Some critics have suggested that television has profound effects on alpha waves, but the waves are dimmished by drowsiness, sleep and with open eyes. Thought to represent activity of the visual cortex in a fainéant state, alpha waves are a type of brain wave predominantly found to originate from the occipital lobe during periods of waking relaxation when the eyes are closed. During this time people, especially kids, are induced in a trance-like state and therefore become “zombies.” This may be the key to television addiction.

The compulsion to watch television or television addiction has been studied over the years to which some arguments are accepted, while others are fait accompli. However, it’s a fact, kids are impressionable, and thus, can become co-dependents to the ideas reinforced by television. In the latest string of crimes committed by children left in homes alone with their siblings, some suggest that the extensive viewing of violence on television causes severe aggressiveness. Sometimes, the crimes are committed by viewing a single episode.

Parents can help their kids but it requires much attention to what their kids purchase, download, what’s popular on television and of course, their listening and viewing patterns. Be active. Some television is not appropreciate for children, with some shows and film that even glamorize the abuse of drugs, violence and alcohol or advocate fornication and sex that focuses on control (BDSM, incest, devaluing women, rape, etc.). The outcome leaves children anesthetized to violence and to gradually accept it a solution to solve problems, or become copycats of what they view; it’s like being propagandized.

Leaving children home alone with a television, often because of the cost of child care, is not the best alternative. Setting small and simple ground rules may lower risk of future dangers and may even increase your children’s attention to their studies.

Here are 5 tips to help you and your children, even with a busy schedule:

• Its okay to view what your kids are watching. This is a good way to find out what’s in and what’s out and to select developmentally appropriate shows.
• Set limits on the amount of time your kids watch TV and the amount they spent with it. This is an excellent way to offset a reduction in your child’s studies.
• Turn off the TV during family meals. If the game is on, and you’re worried about missing a moment, consider TiVo.
• Refuse to let young children view violent or offensive material, and point out fact and fiction. If a character is hurt or killed, help your child come to the understanding that in real life, this type of violence ends in injury or death.
• Disapprove of the violent material and stress that the acts seen on the silver screen are not how to resolve a problem.

Go to this website to get the full story: http://www.obviousmag.com/covers-and-lead-stories/2008/8/10/tune-in.html