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CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

TV or Not TV

Commentator David Hill seeks to banish Shakespeare to the vast wasteland. "TV or not TV?" - That is the question.

By David Hill

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/national/local-national-591258.mp3

Wilmington, NC – I have colleagues and even some friends who claim we shouldn't let television baby-sit our children. To those people I say, "Television does not baby-sit our children. It may keep them occupied for hours, too numb to wreck the house, but it won't open their Cheetos."

Summer is looming, and we've done all we can to nurture our kids' growing minds and bodies. They will swim, ride horses, explore nature, watch Spongebob Squarepants, watch The Fairly Oddparents, and watch more Spongebob.

Of course we could emulate our next-door neighbor, who actually locks his children outside with short breaks for thunderstorms, at least when there's lightning. Or we could be like my childhood friend Jennifer, whose family considered it a badge of honor not to own a television. She brought organic peanut butter sandwiches and wore hemp. My mom was at pains to explain that even if I did take up a collection, there was no guarantee Jennifer's family would accept my donation of a TV set, much less the Calvin Kleins.

But even my own professional society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, doesn't suggest a complete children's television ban, and we're so square our code name for Ralph Nader is "Mr. Cool." Instead we beg parents to limit viewing to one or two hours of high quality, educational programming a day for children over age two. This is less than half the four to six hours the average American child watches, so we figure let's not push it.

We are more uptight with toddlers, saying maybe they shouldn't watch TV at all. That's because any television, even programs like Sesame Street that may be educational for preschoolers, delays language acquisition in younger kids. I was surprised to learn Albert Einstein never actually watched a single educational video (the popular series at the time was called Baby Isaac Newton). Of course our two-year-old learned the name of every train on the Island of Sodor after just one episode of Thomas the Tank Engine. He doesn't say anything else, but still, every train!

My wife and I figure we watched The Dukes of Hazzard for hours as children and we came out fine. This is the same argument people use to justify smoking and drunk driving, and it discounts the possibility that without Bo and Luke Duke we'd now be dot-com billionaires.

Also, television really has changed. From 1998 to 2005 the number of sexual scenes on TV doubled. And while violent acts appear 8 to 12 times per hour on prime-time television, cartoons often show 25 to 50 violent acts per hour. That said Spongebob can't be worse than Tom and Jerry. At least the characters on Spongebob talk! Of course now cartoons air 24 hours a day. When we were kids the Saturday morning party was over the moment Soul Train pulled into the station.

Our family could probably live without TV except for Friday nights. That's when we order pizza and gather on the couch in our jammies. But how can we be entertained without sex or violence? Thank you, reality television! We'll watch contestants sew, cook, even cut hair. And the best part is when our children imitate what they watch all we get is a fashion show. I'm sure we could turn off the TV and do something less mindless, but hey, does the world really need more billionaires? Copyright 2007 David Hill.

Commentator David Hill manages to balance a pediatric practice and raising his own family here in Wilmington.