TELEVISION: Through a Child’s Eyes

How does TV really affect the kids? Not quite so badly as many parents fear, reported three British sociologists last week in a thick new book, Television and the Child (sponsored by Britain’s Ford-like Nuffield Foundation). For three years, in five English cities, the researchers studied 4,500 children (ages: 10-14) who spent more time (an average two hours daily) watching TV than on any other home activity. Some of the conclusions:

¶The more satisfying a child’s life and the more intelligent he is, the less he views TV. Even heavy viewing does not necessarily make most children more aggressive or listless, or discourage them from reading or studying.

¶Overwhelmingly, children prefer thrillers to anything else. Programs aimed specifically at children (puppets, nature, animals) appeal only to the youngest.

¶Children are least disturbed by serialized thrillers, such as westerns, in which the ritualized ending brings back the hero reassuringly after each episode. They enjoy being scared, but become uneasier by the degree to which they can place themselves in a drama. Some children prefer adult crime thrillers precisely because they seem less realistic. To children, daggers and sharp instruments are more scary than guns, a real-life prizefight more upsetting than a western’s barroom brawl.

¶Many younger children (and duller older ones) are helped by TV, which informs them about their world at a pace that suits them.

U.S. parents may find such conclusions oddly bland. An American child can see 12½ hours of nighttime westerns weekly v. 3⅓ in Britain, 10 hours of private-eye shows v. 5 in Britain. And by comparison with such U.S. cut-‘n’-shoots as Peter Gunn (see below), the British children’s favorite thriller, gentlemanly Fabian of Scotland Yard, rarely fired a slug from pistol or bottle. The British sociologists still saw much room for improvement: better dramas outside the dog-cowboy-detective formulas, more attention to girls (half the audience). Meanwhile, as the London Daily Mirror’s “Cassandra” put it: “The appalling mediocrity of most of the stuff that gets on to the TV screen just passes over our kids’ heads. Fine.”