Screen Generation: A Distorted Picture Of The World? - Research, Society

2023 Author: Oswald Adamson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 20:18

Children's television has become as global as the world economy. Japanese "Pokemon", "Teletubbies" from Great Britain, "Sesame Street" - an American educational project - are familiar to children from dozens of countries around the world. In addition to educational missions, children's television is a very promising business, a place to invest money, a way to accustom the audience to a certain viewing mode and program formats.

TV occupation of childhood

Several so-called children's channels have appeared in Russia over the past two years. The presenter is the federal channel on RTR with a non-Russian name Bibigon (a tribute to the Soviet literary tradition in the person of Korney Chukovsky and at the same time an attempt to create an international, English-sounding brand), the decimeter channel Telenyanya (a very apt indication of the channel's caring and entertaining attitude: "No matter what the child is amused, as long as it does not cry"). The application for the children's specialization was made by "NiK" ("MTV-Russia").

To a certain extent, the children's channels include the patriotic "Star", the educational "Shkolnik", and even the channel "2X2" for kidals ¹, adult children who play cartoons of domestic and foreign production, including for small viewers.

None of the channel managers can clearly name and justify the age of their audience. The age limits of childhood are blurred not only on the screen, but also in life. The level of infantilism in the country is so high that for most families there is no internal problem of sharing screen time: children watch what adults do, and adults are not averse to plunging into the children's world of adventure, fantasy and magic.

¹ Kidalty - from the English. kids - "children", adoults - "adults".

Show "Behind the Glass" - from the cradle and then

The screen has become a significant environmental factor for the child, who, according to some reports, spends much more time in front of him and the computer than with adults. Instead of faces, children see screens. He becomes the main guide of the child into the world. The screen dictates laws and offers models of behavior for children who do not yet have a critical attitude towards the world. Teaching preschoolers is based on imitation and direct copying of what they see in front of them. Like the heroes of most cartoons and films, always containing elements of eccentricity and exaggeration, our children grow up with increased excitability, hyperactivity syndrome, dependence on external factors, and a willingness to distract from the original plan.

If the slow cinema of the sixties and seventies made it possible to get used to the image, to understand the motivation of the characters, to have time to ask adults for the incomprehensible, fast, flickering cinema of today draws children into superficial action - an action whose meaning and goals are incomprehensible to children, because no one explained them to them, but they themselves still cannot understand.

One of the consequences of such an attack on children's imaginations is delayed emotional development. Children get used to perceive information from the screen "in its pure form", without feelings and resistance, without emotions for which there is simply not enough time. They grow up cold and indifferent - such as television and the computer world are today. The modernized Kai has been implanted with a "chip of indifference" instead of a piece of ice. Telemir - Kingdom of crooked mirrors in the palaces of the Snow Queen.

Yesterday's children had the opportunity to explore the world on their own. They grabbed and examined beetles while walking, they stroked cats and teased dogs, they built houses from leaves and sticks, invented whole cities from acorns and colored glass. To develop imagination - the most important acquisition at the age of preschooler, children need to be a little short on toys and have enough time in a safe environment. Moderate lack of attention and funds stimulates growth and development. For a tree to grow and reach for the sky, it needs the sun above and the soil under its feet. ItalicSurrounding children with screen nannies, we obscure the light for them and take away peace. Italics We clog their attention with pictures that are alien to them, forcing them to consider and study the artificial world of the screen “through the looking glass”. Clip thinking of the "screen generation" is a delay in development at the stage of involuntary attention, figurative, concrete thinking.

In addition to the fact that a modern child does not learn to dream and fantasize, he has stopped playing role-playing games with his peers. One of the reasons is that movie characters have multiplied and lost their specialness. Fairy tale characters and preferences of children thirty years ago were understandable. The forces of evil and good were personified quite unambiguously, and role-playing games turned from a game into "friends" and "aliens." Today children are guided not by the actions of the heroes, but by their appearance. They are occupied not by good, kind heroes, but by beautiful and "sophisticated" (rich and successful). The screen generation is also glamorous. Children's glamor is now used in most children's TV projects. Catchy, bright, expressive, hyperactive and obsessive characters drove out smart, inquisitive, modest, hardworking, brave rescuers, patrons, defenders and builders … From the screen,as well as from life, a number of important values have disappeared, which allowed us to look optimistically into the future. The optimism of yesterday's builders (albeit “builders of communism”, but still workers) has been replaced by the neurosis of today's consumer. The frenzied joy of adult television is very quickly converted into the "entertainment" of children's channels.

How television is changing a child's lifestyle

Previously, the traditional health theme in connection with television was "Vision and Television". It was believed that due to television, myopia develops, the spine is bent. Children were taught to sit no closer than two meters from the screen. Since then, monitors have improved. With the advent of computer monitors, it is strange to talk about the dangers of television radiation.

But a new, unsympathetic topic has emerged: television and obesity. Along with American cinema, the habit of eating at the screen came to us. Televisions have appeared in kitchens. And this has determined the way of life of many people.

In Italy, according to a poll conducted by the public opinion service Demoscopea, among adolescents aged 13 to 18, 37% depend on television (a larger percentage was shown only by dependence on video games - 49%, and computers - 44%). And in the UK, completed a 30-year study of the effect of watching TV on overweight. So, sensational results have shown that children who watch TV for more than two hours on weekends have a dramatic increase in the risk of obesity.

We are not children, children are not us

I would like to remind about some of the developmental features of preschoolers, which are forgotten, and often simply do not know, by the authors of TV programs. According to the French psychologist Jean Piaget, children are characterized by:

• self-centeredness: it is difficult for them to understand the point of view of another. For example, children choose a gift for a friend or parent, but exactly the one they like. A car for mom, a pistol for grandmother;
• centrism: it is difficult for children to take into account several properties of an object at the same time. For example, a ball for them is either round or red;
• irreversibility: they cannot understand that actions with objects can have a reverse sequence and return the object to its original position. For example, you can not only go out of the door, but also come back;
• difficulties in distinguishing between the external side and reality: they are more guided by simple external signs, but they may never learn to distinguish between the internal states of people;
• paralogical thinking: children confuse cause and effect, can perceive the relationship between objects and people as mechanical, "it is not clear where it came from." Can't remember the origin of the heroes;
• anthropomorphism: children attribute human qualities to non-human beings (for example, they believe that toys can hurt);
• animism: children attribute signs of life to inanimate objects. For example, children believe that the sun is alive because it moves, it can appear, and it can disappear.

The list of these features, which persist in children right up to school, shows how helpless children are in understanding the world around them. Only adults can help them. Lively and warm parents, grandmothers, nannies who communicate a lot with children, discuss important issues for children with them, hug them, and encourage them.

Key issues of quality television

There are questions that both high-quality television and high-quality education should answer.

• Does the child understand what he sees and hears?
• Do the humor and statements of the heroes of the children demean?
• Does the message meet the needs of the child? Do we talk to children about what really excites them?
• Do we take into account the peculiarities of the child's age, realizing that there is a big difference in cognitive and personal development between a two-year-old toddler and a ten-year-old?
• Are the situations and stories that children encounter too aggressive?
• Are we teaching children something really new, useful and important, or are we repeating old and useless educational clichés?

The solution is to have psychological and educational control in television projects for children. This means that child development specialists must be present at all stages of television production, from the formation of the concept of the program and ending with the preview of pilot episodes in kindergartens to clarify the content and format.

Modern showdown with Cheburashka

A simple question for the backfill for adults: is Cheburashka a boy or a girl? Most of the TV people, to my surprise, answered: "Of course, boy!" Little, fluffy, naive, speaking in the voice of a girl Cheburashka is a boy ?! The authors of children's programs, who came to children's television on a new wave of crime programs and erotic shows, were relentless. Fortunately, Eduard Uspensky had an anniversary, in honor of which a monument to Cheburashka was opened. And Cheburashkin's "father" admitted that the prototype of the famous heroine was the three-year-old daughter of his friend, a little girl in a tsigey fur coat and hat, who rolled into the writer's house on a winter Christmas evening.

Ironically, today children’s films are made by people who cannot tell boys from girls, good from bad, beautiful from ugly. Convincing them to learn is difficult. It is easier to warn parents to be critical of the still very raw product of new domestic channels.