Chapter 2
why did the boy stick to tv
While experimental television broadcasts were first transmitted in the 1920s, mass production of television sets did not occur until after World War II. By 1960 the number of sets in the U.S. had surpassed the number of homes. With this relatively swift introduction of television into domestic American life, concern was voiced over the harmful influence that watching television might have on the nation’s children. Although Congress held its first hearing on the subject in 1952, they chose not to take any action to interfere with the industry, in part because that year the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters adopted a code to regulate broadcast content. In 1954 and 1955, Congress conducted additional hearings to investigate whether television—along with other mass media products that appealed to children, such as comic books and motion pictures—had anything to do with the documented rise in incidents of juvenile crime. As the renowned media researcher Paul Lazarsfeld testified, studies showed that the hearings, which themselves were televised, only led to worry among viewers rather than to practical measures to correct any perceived problem. In the following testimony from the 1955 hearings, child psychologist Eleanor E. Maccoby discussed her research findings, while Lazarsfeld advocated the funding of long-term projects. Both stressed the limitations of research for providing reliable evidence that would definitively link juvenile delinquency to television viewing.
If children are spending 3 hours a day watching television, they must be doing it instead of what they would have been doing in those 3 hours if they didn’t have television, and we are interested in this question of substitution of activities. So we compared the children who did have television and were spending their 3 hours a day watching it with the children who didn’t yet have it to see just exactly what they might have been doing if they were not watching television.
We found some television time is a direct transfer from radio listening, movie going, comic book reading, and regular book reading. We found, however, that television watching is so much greater in time than the time that used to be spent on those other media that the child’s total exposure to mass media is just about doubled when the family gets television. That is, the television takes away a good deal of time from other mass media, but it also takes time from hobbies, from playing outdoors, from helping mother around the house, and all the other kinds of children’s activities that would go on. As I say, the total exposure to mass media is just about doubled with the advent of television in the home.
It is interesting, too, to note that TV children who watch television a great deal are the ones who read comic books a great deal. They are not the ones who read books. There is a negative relationship there, and the more a child watches television, the less he is likely to read books.
Some of the television time, incidentally, is taken from sleep time, as I have said, because the bedtimes are later.
All right; now what about the impact of having a television set upon family life?
You are all familiar with the statement that Henry Ford took the American family out of the home and scattered them and that television has brought them back together again. That is true, in a certain sense. We found in our study that the amount of time children spend actually in the physical presence of their parents and their other family members goes up when they get television because the family spends a good deal of time sitting together and watching television.
However, the amount of time a child spends with his family, not counting television time is very drastically reduced. It is about half as great, and what happens then is that the parents and children are sitting together watching something jointly, but they are not talking together nor playing together nor working together. They are only doing that half as much time as they used to before they got television.
Now, the meaning of this was brought home to me in a particular interview that I remember. I was talking to the mother in the dining room of a little apartment because her husband was sitting in the living room watching television, and we did not want to disturb him. So we were sitting there and I was interviewing her about her children’s activities and while we were there the little boy came home from school and he went up to the living room and went up to his father and he had brought home a drawing he had made at school. He said, “Look, Daddy; see this drawing?” that he had. His father said, “Sssh.” He pushed him away because the father was in a particularly crucial part of the story, so the child sat down and watched the program.
But here was an opportunity for the parent and child to interact, and for the father to say something to his boy about the accomplishment; but here was an opportunity that was missed because of the father’s absorption in TV. I assume this is happening at a lot of times.