Quote of the Week

"TV has attention deficit disorder built into it"

Garrison Keillor

Never a truer word. Is it me (am I mad as a teapot?) or is TV just like a terrible drug that gives you a sort of fix but leaves you high and dry afterwards? I can think of nothing on Television that I would miss if I did not have one. We pay the BBC £160 to give us a lot of liberal agenda bullshit and we get news that is frankly flogging us a very warped picture of the world. And of course, it makes us impatient and jaded. We think we have seen it because it was on Television. We are being entertained to death.

Further reading:

A study from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that watching videos as a toddler may lead to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD, also called ADD in UK) in later life.

TV watching "rewires" an infant’s brain, says Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis lead researcher and director of the Child Health Institute at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle, Wash. The damage shows up at age 7 when children have difficulty paying attention in school.

"In contrast to the way real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, the pace of TV is greatly sped up." says Christakis. His research appears in the April 2004 issue of Pediatrics. Quick scene shifts of video images become "normal," to a baby "when in fact, it’s decidedly not normal or natural." Christakis says. Exposing a baby’s developing brain to videos may overstimulate it, causing permanent changes in developing neural pathways.

"Also in question is whether the insistent noise of television in the home may interfere with the development of ‘inner speech’ by which a child learns to think through problems and plans and restrain impulsive responding," wrote Jane Healy, psychologist and child brain expert in the magazine’s commentary.