Many of us are “young” enough to remember when we were warned not to sit too close to the TV or you’d go blind.
We may have been sitting in front of a black-and-white Admiral, we may have used Vice-grips to realign the antennae every time we changed to the other of two channels we could watch, we may have only gotten an hour and a half of kids’ programs per week — but we were supposed to make sure we didn’t go blind.
Now the issue is not going blind, but going stupid, or something to that effect.
According to a new Associated Press report, it’s been proven that TV makes you stupid.
OK, that’s not what the report said, but come on, you know it’s true.
Here’s what the AP reported: “The cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants is in hot water from a study suggesting that watching just nine minutes of that program can cause short-term attention and learning problems in 4-year-olds.
“The problems were seen in a study of 60 children randomly assigned to either watch ‘SpongeBob,’ or the slower-paced PBS cartoon ‘Caillou’ or assigned to draw pictures. Immediately after these nine-minute assignments, the kids took mental function tests; those who had watched ‘SpongeBob’ did measurably worse than the others.”
See?
Watching TV makes you stupid!
It gets worse: “Previous research has linked TV-watching with long-term attention problems in children, but the new study suggests more immediate problems can occur after very little exposure — results that parents of young kids should be alert to.”
So get the kids out from in front of the tube.
Get out of it yourselves.
Read to them.
Color pictures.
Get outside.
Watch a classic movie if you need to, but don’t just plop yourselves or the kids down in front of the tube.
It is not good for you.
The Associated Press wouldn’t lie.
— Chuck Smith