Video Boy

In the beginning there was Superman. Today, reproducing like oversexed mutants, there is a whole squadron of superduper do-gooders streaking across the TV screen. They are not only faster than a speeding bullet, but they can also do things like liquefy and multiply, or fell a foe with a laser-beam glance. The skies are guarded by Roger Ramjet, the seas by Marine Boy, the barnyard by Super Chicken. What they can't handle, Granite Man, Frogman, Coil Man, Spider Man, Liquid Man, Aquaman, Multi Man and Birdman can. Yet of all the offspring of TV's comic book culture, the most lethargic is Video Boy. He doesn't do anything. He just sits there, sucks his thumb and stares at the tube.

The typification of the TV tot, Video Boy was raised by an electronic baby sitter. The first word he uttered was "Colgate"; the first phrase he learned to read was "The End." When he puts on his raincoat, he becomes a secret agent. When his mother presses him to finish his carrots, he mutters "it's clobberin' time" just like The Thing. When Dad takes over the set to watch football, he and his sister play Dating Game with her dolls. He doesn't climb trees; he watches Tarzan do it. At three, he spends five hours a week before the magic box. By the time he is twelve, he will devote 25 hours to weekly viewing, or more time than he will spend with his parents or in school or church.

Left to Right. Is Video Boy a freak in the making? The question frankly baffles many parents. Though they may admit that TV can expose new channels of experience, there is still the lingering fear that some day Video Boy is going to tie a towel around his neck and try to fly off the garage roof like Bat Fink; or, if somebody crosses him in the playground, he may poke his fingers in his eyes in the style of the Three Stooges. But mostly, with misty recollections of taffy pulls and swimming holes, parents are bothered by a vague feeling that, somehow, as one mother puts it, "life should be lived, not watched."

The reaction is understandable. De spite the acknowledged importance of TV in the life of a modern child, remarkably little study has been done in the field. To draw any meaningful conclusions, researchers must first find a comparable group of children who have not been exposed to TV; but alas, in the U.S. there is no such group. What studies have been made are largely peripheral. Yes, Video Boy devotes half an hour less to playtime than did the pre-TV child. No, TV does not discourage reading, but if anything, stimulates it. Yes, TV does help develop such prereading skills as scanning from left to right. No, normal viewing does not impair eyesight. Yes, TV has replaced reading and storytelling sessions with the parent. No, TV has no significant effect on school work; viewing has not encroached on school-related activities, but merely supplanted the time that used to be devoted to comic books and radio.

Catharsis School. Such shreds of research are useful, but they reveal little of the overall impact of TV on Video Boy's attitudes and behavior. The effect may be profound. Allan Leitman of Boston's Educational Development Center warns that TV is creating a generation of spectators. "Kids come into school today," he explains, "and they wait for people to tell them things. Without handling frogs or flying a kite, they lead less of a life. We're moving along in a mold that will produce people I can't even imagine." Many parents, shuddering at the heavy dose of violence on the screen, foresee a generation of juvenile delinquents. TV heroes, they complain, do not merely administer justice, they annihilate their enemies with cheerful abandon. The bulk of research, however, concludes that TV by itself is rarely a cause of crime or aggression; it can be a contributing factor, but only in the case of a child who is already disturbed.

But educators are far from unanimous on the subject. There is, for example, the "catharsis school"; it contends that a little vicarious violence each day keeps the psychiatrist away. Noting that the evening news on TV is not exactly Dingdong School, San Francisco Psychiatrist Gene Sagan says that "it is natural for man to murder and destroy. And it is society's responsibility to provide a healthy outlet. The more ritualized violence we have on TV, the fewer assaults, riots and wars we will have."

Lucy & Fred. Sagan's views are in the minority, but on one point most educators agree: Video Boy is becoming a sort of peewee pundit. He knows, for example, the finer points of docking in outer space, can distinguish Bach from Bartok, and is a storehouse of such miscellany as the fact that whales' backs get sunburned and peel. When he enters school, his vocabulary will be at least one year ahead of the pre-TV child. On the nursery-type show Romper Room, a teacher once asked her toddlers if anyone could think of a word beginning with u. "Ubiquitous," piped a kindergartner.

Ubiquitous is the word for TV, for with its vast reach, it tends to level the differences between the city and country child; in the ghettos, it can serve as a kind of head-start program, exposing new worlds that a deprived child would otherwise never see. The drawback, of course, is that much of TV programming has little to do with the real world. Adults are often depicted as bickering, tension-ridden morons. If, for instance, Video Boy had Lucy for a mother and Fred Flintstone for a father, who could blame him if he ran off to join the flower children?

The problem, explains Menninger Foundation Senior Psychologist Marvin Ack, is that for younger and less stable children, TV can lead to a confusion of fantasy with reality. "The most important thing during a child's preschool years," he says, "is learning how to control his environment. If TV offers only unrealistic and pseudo-educational programming, the child's adaptation is both unrealistic and valueless."

Blasto. To a great extent, TV has ignored its responsibility in programming. The bulk of children's programming is at best dismal. Since the big dollar is in prime-time programming, none of the networks even bothers to have a children's division; and most producers of children's TV think of it only as a chance to pick up some experience before moving up to the big time. With a few notable exceptions, such as Popular Scientist Don Herbert's Watch Mr.

Wizard (no longer on the air), NBC's Animal Secrets, ABC's Discovery and CBS's Young People's Concerts, most of the shows are misguided attempts based on what adults think children want to see. The rest of the fare is an endless round of superheroes rapping and zapping assorted monsters.

The hardest rap is saved for the kiddies. They are fed one commercial every four minutes, or twice the adult rate. Says Adman Frederick Bruns: "The priceless thing is repetition. You've got to get to a kid three to five times a week to get him to act on a message." Video Boy acts by nagging his parents to get him a "Blasto-tank-with-twin-rocket -launchers -by -Slambang -Toys." Once he gets it, though, he is invariably disappointed because the toy is always much smaller and much less exciting than it looked on the overdramatized commercial. Thus Video Boy learns a basic lesson of TV viewing: distrust.

Shift. Not surprisingly, children have gradually altered their viewing habits, until today they devote about two-thirds of their time to so-called adult shows.

According to one survey, the five most popular children's shows in 1951 were Crusader Rabbit, Hopalong Cassidy, Wild Bill Hickok, Howdy Doody and Uncle Mistletoe. Last year's top five: Man from U.N.C.L.E., Bewitched, Time Tunnel, Lost in Space and The Green Hornet. The shift is not only a reflection on the state of children's TV but on the industry as a whole. As Child Psychologist Hilde Himmelweit, author of Television and the Child, says: "It seems to me a devastating indictment that while ten-year-olds still pick up some knowledge from television, by the time they reach 13 only the dull ones do so, and that the more intelligent the child the less the TV hold becomes. Is it perhaps that much of the evening entertainment is at the level of a ten-to eleven-year-old?"

If so, who is to blame? Not Video Boy. Like any child, he looks at TV not because it is so compelling, but because it is there. Offer him something better and he will watch it just as avidly. That responsibility falls partly to the networks, but mostly to the parents. Child psychiatrists agree that parents should--indeed must--exercise some control over TV viewing time and program selection. Otherwise, Video Boy may retreat to the box, and any time spent beyond 25 hours of weekly viewing is regarded as a sign of emotional disturbance.

The best way to guard Video Boy against any ill effects of TV, says Wilbur Schramm, director of Stanford's Institute for Communications Research, "is to make him feel loved and secure at home, and so far as possible surround him with friends and activities."

In other words, turn off the set a little more often and get acquainted.

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