televisual parenting

My wife seems to think that all screens are the devil's work and is really hard core about how much TV the kids (9 and 10) can watch. She won't let them watch any during the week and a very small amount at the weekend. I am shit at enforcing this and find they become fascinated by the Tour de France or whatever it is that I want to watch.

I don't know if she is right about the detrimental effect of TV but i do know that my 10 yr old seems to have that compulsive edge to his character whenever he gets on the PC to play games, make stickman animations or whatever is the latest craze.

I have recently banned myself from watching tv. The only thing I watch now is footie.

Negative consequences of tv-watching, for me:

- decreased sociability and social ability the day after
- intellectual and physical passivity
- watching it, I stay up too late; it is also just stimulating enough to prevent me from falling asleep on the sofa if my body is otherwise urging me to do so
- anxiety-making media messages
- most stuff on tv is gash

Didn't watch too much as a kid and I don't now. (Mind you there were only 3 channels until I was about twelve, ha ha).

Mostly me and the other half get stuck into box sets of an evening (West Wing at the moment). If I'm alone in the flat I won't even turn it on.

When I first moved to London I ended up in a house where the TV was on from lunchtime until we went to bed, which really pissed me off. Literally any old shit would get watched - "The Wonder Years" and "Bread" ffs.

Daughter seems to go in waves with it all, sometimes she has her tea in front of Newsround and the Simpsons

It does get put on before/after school occasionally if her Mum has to work. But she's equally keen on mucking about with books or doing drawing or whatever. Which is great.

We did find if she was watching TV before school she got very arsey and sluggish. When she was 4 or 5 we had to make a real effort to ensure she wasn't exposed to TV commercials, especially in the run up to christmas - life just became this endless wants list of useless plastic toys that she had convinced herself were great.

I grew up without a tv and tho i resented it a little as a kid I am glad now - I read a massive amount and it definitely helped loads in literacy / vocabulary etc as a kid. Have only ever had a TV in shared houses when other people have had that.

Watch loads of torrented TV series tho and waste far too much time on the net nowadays...

john eden said:

Daughter seems to go in waves with it all, sometimes she has her tea in front of Newsround and the Simpsons

It does get put on before/after school occasionally if her Mum has to work. But she's equally keen on mucking about with books or doing drawing or whatever. Which is great.

We did find if she was watching TV before school she got very arsey and sluggish. When she was 4 or 5 we had to make a real effort to ensure she wasn't exposed to TV commercials, especially in the run up to christmas - life just became this endless wants list of useless plastic toys that she had convinced herself were great.

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Precisely our experiences.

And like you, we also use the TV tactically - it can buy you half an hour's peace.

Too much sucks the life from them.

Can't find a link right now (sorry) but there are studies that link educational success with childhood TV consumption: very strong negative correlation. The study claimed that TV consumption is a stronger predictor of educational success than social class.

In my milieu, most parents don't have TV for this reason (as also satiriesed here.)

Im from the 3 channel age too. Never watched too much as a kid as parents would turn it off after 9.00.

But that did mean I would go into my room and read or listen to radio 1 when it was Peel monday-thursday. Tommy Vance/Robbie Vincent fridays then pirates stations started up.

Even now I my only TV is not even flatscreen, not even widescreen. A very old 3:4 Sony trinitron I had since 1996. Hold tight that telly.

I watched tons of tv as a kid. My earliest memories are of watching Fat Albert, The Cosby Show and Golden Girls when I was 4. A lot of my childhood reality was constructed around what was on tv: Transformers, Power Rangers, all that stuff. And I might even say that I my conversation skills and concepts of social intercourse were informed by tv tropes, for better or worse.

Saying that I must have been resilient to TV's more harmful effects as I did quite well at school. The only real regret was that I never formed a good reading habit. Novels are still, well, novel to me. I'm sure I would have benefited greatly if I did read more.

As I grew older though I got into video and pc games and became a geek basically. Tv watching went down and internet use went waaaay up.

Now living in London I have an LCD screen which can receive tv broadcasts but it's hooked up to my laptop for watching torrented shows/films. I have no idea what's going on in tv land these days.

I like TV although I pay for about 150 channels and only around 10 of them are any good. I mostly watch sports, news and the Food Network which is one of television's greatest assets. If I ever watch TV with my girlfriend though she has this habit of flicking through all the channels without even registering what is actually on, deciding that nothing is on, then settling on Law and Order or Canada's Next Top Model.

In conclusion, TV is really great because it can teach you how to make an amazing omelette.

My parents didn't allow me to watch anything good when I was a kid (Simpsons, 90210, Saved by the Bell) except the A-Team and MacGuyver. So as soon as the babysitter came over we snuck in all the forbidden shows.

To make up for anything I missed I watch an ungodly amount of TV now, or I should say, I leave my TV on all of the time. But I realize it's mostly just background noise, and I leave it on only because I have a hard time concentrating without TV or music in the background. The only programs I actually pay attention to are Dr. G: Medical Examiner, Diagnosis X, and Obsessed.

I used to watch loads, I'd just be left in front of the TV for entertainment. My dad used to watch the news and documentaries, and thought everything else was crap, so loads of my earliest memories of TV are based around Northern Ireland, strikes, Cold War, etc. I remember all this (now) obscure stuff, like this bloke mistakenly getting shot by the cops, who thought he was some bank robber called David Martin, and Operation Bluestar, etc, and a heavy documentary about these joyriders in Belfast under attack from the IRA / UDA. I still get a tear in my eye whenever I hear 'The World At War' theme tune. Also used to love 'Bullseye' (laughing at it - we thought Jim Bowen was a cunt), 'Grange Hill' (I'm still in love with Justine) and 'The A Team', what a doss.

My mum watched a load of shit too depressing to mention. She used to stay up to watch all these horror films on BBC2, but she was too scared to watch them on her own, so she'd wake me up and make me sit there watching "Psychomania", "The Omen", "Blood on Satan's Claw", etc etc etc til closedown.

It's only really been the last couple of years I've completely stopped watching anything except the odd bit of 'Newsnight', cookery programmes, football / superbikes or documentaries that look interesting. Can't remember the last time I switched on Channel 4, it's like some vile, vicious pantomime for smug fucking halfwits. "Can fat mums on the dole get by in a Pakistan village, eating healthy, dahl-based dishes?" (that was actually on). All this from the channel that used to stick on 'Midnight Underground' and 'Devil's Advocate' in the 90s...sad.

I ought to get Sky, 'The Daily Show''s meant to be good.

Yeah, C4 is virtually wall-to-wall shite these days. Have you seen Green Wing? It's just so patently some fucking coked-up Soho programming executive's idea of 'edgy'. Really, really poor.

I just looked up the Wikipedia entry on Channel 4, and one of the on-site links at the end is for 'Wank Week'. Sums it up really.

Edit:

nomadthethird said:

My parents didn't allow me to watch anything good when I was a kid (Simpsons, 90210, Saved by the Bell) except the A-Team and MacGuyver. So as soon as the babysitter came over we snuck in all the forbidden shows.

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Ha, when my brother and I were little we banned from watching The A-Team, because it was allegedly 'violent'. I can only assume my parents had never seen a whole episode themselves, because it's the least violent show ever made. Sure, it's full of car chases, explosions, gunfights and mean right hooks, but no-one ever so much as got a bloody nose.

Mr. Tea said:

Yeah, C4 is virtually wall-to-wall shite these days. Have you seen Green Wing? It's just so patently some fucking coked-up Soho programming executive's idea of 'edgy'. Really, really poor.

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I'm glad someone else said it, I thought it was awful.

The C4 doc that really infuriated me was one about battery farming and health risks, aired a couple of years back. After a slow start, part 2 started with the presenter introducing a scientist called Michael Flatley - "no, not that one!" she quipped. Minutes later, a group of scientists were referred to as "boffins" and the whole farce ended with some D-list TV chef preparing kebabs for a group of 20-30 year old blanks to 'taste test' - the cows who weren't penned in tasted better, they concluded. Aside from being spoken to like I was a brain-damaged child, I also really didn't need the same shot of chickens with broken legs, lying in their own excrement, repeated four times with the standard, ominous, 'finger down on the synthesizer key' drone.

Channel 4 mirrors almost exactly what happened to stuff like the NME, doesn't it?

You go from stuff like The Tube and "The Banned Season" and lots of mad Derek Jarman films, and arty programmes where Z'ev is drumming on a boat on the Thames and stuff to the lowest common denominator shite.

john eden said:

Channel 4 mirrors almost exactly what happened to stuff like the NME, doesn't it?

You go from stuff like The Tube and "The Banned Season" and lots of mad Derek Jarman films, and arty programmes where Z'ev is drumming on a boat on the Thames and stuff to the lowest common denominator shite.

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Yeah, not a bad analogy. A compulsive eater sharing a hilarious, tear-streaked 24 hours with an anorexic, while some 23-year old doctor pops up to state the bloody obvious about nutrition = double page photo spread of the two Libertines blokes seen having a drink and George Lamb's top 10 horizontal jogging anthems*.

Incidentally, don't know if anyone's seen this, but there's a load of old MM / NME scans here

http://archivedmusicpress.wordpress.com/

DO NOT access that link if you despise 80s/90s 'indie'.

* = I guess, I haven't read NME for a while...

I set fire to my TV in 1987*, and all that means is that when I do see TV now, I can watch it for 72 hours straight before the novelty wears thin. I'm a TV bulimic.

I watched maybe three hours a night as a kid, maybe more, I was much younger than everyone else around. It probably makes a difference if you were an only child or not I reckon with TV consumption. I've rarely found a kid that wouldn't ignore the TV if 'someone' to play with was in the room, they're quite selective watchers really.

God John just reminded me about the adverts. Kids are reaaaaaaally susceptible, you have to rubbish them as soon as they come on, and even that doesn't work. It's the sheer volume of BRIGHT! PINK! that wins every time.



* don't do this at home, kids, but if you do, ask an adult for help

mistersloane said:

I set fire to my TV in 1987*

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Sounds fun and therapeutic.

nomadthethird said:

Sounds fun and therapeutic.

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Me and Paul Meme helped some friends of ours smash up their TV once, it was awesome.