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For the first time, I think that there might be something to this attention deficit nonsense. And, for the first time, I think there’s a plausible explanation for where it comes from.
For the first time, if this study means anything, I can get a sense of the how large this epidemic might actually be.
And, like I said, it scares the daylights out of me.
Simply put, the more TV a child averages per day before its fourth birthday the more likely it is to have, once it gets to be 7, symptoms most of us associate with hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder.
It doesn’t matter what the children watch, it doesn’t matter who watches it with them, it only matters that they’re watching TV. It can be Big Bird or porn, it’s all the same. The theory is that it’s something to do with the wiring of the brain. Watching dancing electric pictures, at the pacing and intensity of television, teaches the brain to adapt itself to a certain type of world.
The problem is, nobody lives in that world.
Life isn’t edited or paced like television. And when the real world tries to process through a brain that’s adapted to television, things don’t quite click. Kids end up troubled.
Or at least they can.
