TV and Young Character

The moral development expert Thomas Likona visited town recently, and I was able to ask him a few questions before he gave a talk. One question I had was whether he still recommended that grade school children watch only a half hour of TV a day- a rather extereme recommendation I had read from him nearly a decade earlier.

"Oh, no," he responded. And I nodded, thinking he gave up on that recommendation due to some research turning out some one way rather than another. But I was wrong, and he continued "now I recommend no TV altogether."

Surprised to hear this, I got ready to ask him about the recent study, "The Effects of Fast-Paced Cartoons" published in Pediatrics, the one about Sponge Bob that got a lot of press. It tested the executive function of 60 4-year-olds who watched 9 minutes of Sponge Bob. But it was simpler than that.

TV, he explained, like phones used to, and like all screen time still does, takes away from face time and relationship building with mom and dad. It takes away from other, more satisfying activities with longer pay-offs. There is no learning going on, no play, no time outside. Easier to keep such a distraction out of the picture.

Well. Well. Well! What to say! What is an interesting way to build a case, I thought. No need to challenge the differences between programs, no need to question sample size or note how many accomplished people report having watched TV "all the time" in their childhoods. (I somehow doubt that was possible back then, but nonetheless, it is commonly asserted.)

I couldn't think of a way to challenge something that seemed pretty obvious, though I added in that not having a TV would surely lesson the battles over time-limits and the mental exhausation that comes after concentrating on a jarring fast-paced show.

Yet recommending no TV to parents today has to be the least promising proposal of all time. Young children are reportedly watching up to 4 hours a day on average, and the kind of lifestyles that make so much viewing possible are clearly part of our culture. It is difficult to change a culture.

But, to me, Likona, in a few words, said enough that the moral option seems clear: take the harder route, the odd one, the reviled one, and try no TV for your children. For the simple reasons, not because TV has shown to be so very "bad," but because it keeps children, in half hour periods, from doing things we can be pretty sure are good. (I can imagine all types of exceptions, of course.)

Traditional virtue ethics is all about postponing pleasures when they have taken too much hold on us. It constantly reminds us that we can lose sight of what matters in the most pleasant of ways. I am rather sure that the same warnings ancients used to give others about constant theater-going would apply today: don't get caught up. Don't let your children get caught up.

For an ancient version of this kind of worry, take a look at Seneca's letter to Lucilius about his own bad habit of "lounging at the games."

I'm keeping his words in mind about the "young character" in particular. He writes that even "Socrates, Cato, and Laelius might have been shaken in their moral strength" were the pressures of conforming to the majorities' thoughtless habits put upon them. He writes that "none of us, no matter how much he cultivates his abilities, can withstand the shock of faults that approach, as it were, with so great a retinue."

Seneca continues:

What then do you think the effect will be on character, when the world at large assaults it! You must either imitate or loathe the world.

But both courses are to be avoided; you should not copy the bad simply because they are many, nor should you hate the many because they are unlike you.