Does TV Influence Our Kids?

Previously published and then removed from Persona Paper.

The argument is about as old as television itself. Some people claim that television has absolutely no influence whatsoever on the people who watch it – that it just serves as an idiot box where people get sucked in and seduced by it, while other people blame the television industry and media in general for every crime ever committed.

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) assumes responsibility for all types of communications, interstate or international, and covers everything from television and radio to satellite and cable. Their rules and regulations have become somewhat lax in terms of what they allow and what they didn't use to allow. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, a MARRIED couple had to be fully clothed and wasn’t even allowed to sleep in the same bed. 

Now single men and woman parade around wearing little more than g-strings, if anything at all. Proving that any of what appears on TV has any influence at all is difficult. How can we measure what affects our kids unless we have them hooked up to brain scans while they’re watching? While some measurements have been recorded, showing brain reactions to certain visual stimuli is not always possible. Unless we record our children every time they watch TV, we can’t observe their response all the time.

However, I think I have proof that television does indeed influence our kids. While watching a Team Umizoomi episode,  “Haircut, it's Your Hair,” one of my granddaughters decided to take matters into her own hands. You can see the results in the photo above, generously donated to me by her mother, my youngest daughter. 

So to answer the age-old question – does television influence our kids – the answer is absolutely – and they might even be persuaded to act on what they see.