One of the features of modern civilization is the transition to an information society, the rapid development of television and Internet technologies.
The appearance of a TV in every home has led to the fact that many people spend a significant part of their free time in front of the TV screen. Meeting friends, walking, reading books, playing sports are replaced by hours of watching TV. Why did people change their way of life so quickly? It turns out there is a scientific explanation for this.
Scientists believe that this attraction to television is formed due to an innate human property - the so-called exploratory reflex, which was laid down by nature as a protective reaction for a quick auditory and visual reaction to an unexpected or new stimulus that could signal danger.
Back in 1986, scientists from Stanford University and the University of Missouri (USA) came to the conclusion that such television effects as editing, changing plans, arrivals, noises, light, affect a person's research reflex and are able to hold his attention for a long time. For example, in commercials, music videos, plans and angles change at an average speed of one object per second, irritating the research reflex non-stop. It is the exploratory reflex that is used at full capacity that explains the common responses of viewers: "When I watch TV, I feel hypnotized", "If the TV is on, I cannot take my eyes off it."
The hypnoid state sharply limits the perception and processing of information, but enhances the processes of its imprinting and programming of behavior.
But there is also a deeper influence of advertising on a person. The colorfulness and brightness of advertising leads to a strong bias towards commodity consumption, stimulating not spiritual, but exclusively material interests. Head of the Department of Psychoecology, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, Academician I. V. Smirnov says that during each diagnostic procedure carried out by scientists, the highest moral spheres were necessarily tested: the idea of God, the idea of the family, the idea of the Motherland and a number of similar basic ideas.
The results showed that people deny higher, basic concepts. What is worth living for is devalued. Instead, material values such as consumption, entertainment, accumulation are substituted.
The idea of God - not in words, but as a deep perception, notes I. V. Smirnov, completely removed from the souls of most of our contemporaries. Even among the clergy who underwent diagnostics at the Department of Psychoecology, not a single one had this idea.
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This very alarming effect of advertising is apparently facilitated by another telecommunications technology - the technology of "embedding" certain scenarios in the human life cycle.
Russian academician, member of the Association of Film Education and Media Pedagogy of Russia V. S. Sobkin notes that:
“The broadcast of scenes of violence and eroticism quite clearly corresponds to the daily and weekly life cycle. Scenes of violence and eroticism are “built in” into the life cycle of a person just at those moments when the greatest relaxation is expected, a decrease in the control of consciousness (phases of preparation for sleep, morning hours of weekends).
In the evening hours there is the most intense broadcast of violence and eroticism, which leads to the fact that these scenes begin to be absorbed by the viewer at a subconscious level. "Thus, we are witnessing a special socio-cultural technique of television's work to introduce officially taboo norms and patterns of behavior into the mass consciousness."
But, unfortunately, lately, no matter what channel you turn on, someone is sure to be killed, accidents and disasters are told. In the mass media the following picture is presented: “everything is bad everywhere”. And people have both apathy and aggression at the same time.
Professor A. M. Prikhozhan from the Institute of Psychology. L. S. Vygotsky (Moscow) notes that television plays the role of a stimulant that awakens negativity in a person due to the level of crime stories on television. The constant repetition of the same scenes, such as violence and cruelty, not only diminishes attention and response to them, but, most importantly, dramatically lowers empathy for victims and makes violence and cruelty a common feature of everyday life.
According to the professor, there is a way out of this situation - not to watch TV at all! Prikhozhan A. M. notes: it is necessary that the number of stories that are positive from an emotional and moral point of view sharply outweigh the flow of negative television information.
But if television technologies have such an effect on adults, then what effect do they have on the newly forming organism and psyche of a child who has not yet formed protective mechanisms?
A child's brain is genetically programmed to develop in conditions of constant interaction with surrounding adults, and later with peers. Without such interaction, a child, no matter how brilliant he was born, will not be able to realize his potential - let us recall the stories we know about Mowgli children who, from early childhood, were brought up in the environment of animals and then, having got into the human environment, could not master speech and human forms of behavior.
This is due to the fact that it is in the first years of life in the process of communication and interaction with others that the most effective formation of neural connections in the cerebral cortex occurs, due to which the child develops rapidly, learns the world around him. For normal development, a child simply needs emotional and verbal communication with others, joint activities, games with adults and peers - but not with the TV!
United States researcher Mary Wynn notes:
"The most important thing that a child should receive is absent: when watching TV, the child does not participate in verbal communication - hundreds or thousands of words are not spoken and, therefore, do not have a feedback, questions are not asked and not answered, there is no dialogue."
The result of such one-sided communication, as noted by one of the leading scientists in England in this field, Sally Ward, is a lag in development from the first year of life. And by the age of 3, children whose parents used the TV as a nanny were already 1 year behind their peers, according to her research.
Therefore, it becomes clear the opinion of Susan Johnson, a California researcher who studies the interactions of the brain and television, that “the television cannot be used even for a short rest of the child. Children's eyes are designed from birth to look at human faces. Therefore, the best rest for a small child is quiet communication with the mother or father."
Scientists compare the fundamentality of the influences brought by television and information technology to the "visual" or "graphic revolution". As a result of this visual revolution, as the American sociologist and cultural scientist, specialist in the field of media culture Postman notes, the unit of transmitted information was not a word, as it was many hundreds of thousands of years before, but a visual sign, moreover, mainly advertising.
What does this change for the development of the child?
First, unlike a statement, an image can neither be confirmed nor refuted - it is simply presented to the viewer. But children in preschool and primary school age, as psychologists note, do not know how to distinguish fiction from reality, to critically treat the information received. These features of the perception of teleinformation by children must be taken into account.
Secondly, despite the availability of cognitive and educational programs, television does not contribute to the development of a sustainable interest in the world around us, other people. It awakens only curiosity, which is immediately satisfied with often superficial and sometimes distorted information, moreover, presented in an entertaining form. Scientific observations prove that TV addiction between the ages of one and three leads to problems with concentration by the seventh year of life, that is, by the time of entering school. And children who cannot concentrate simply lose the opportunity to learn and remember something.
Thirdly, as scientists note, the problem of the disappearance of children's curiosity is associated with the widespread use of television and the Internet. The world around us has always presented many mysteries for the child, and the adult was the authority capable of uncovering these mysteries for the child. The Internet and television make information publicly available, although not always reliable. And adults cease to be the authoritative source of knowledge for the child. As a result, childish curiosity is often replaced by cynicism or arrogant arrogance.
Fourthly, the flow of information from the TV screen far exceeds the child's ability to perceive it and independently process it. By itself, the visual range of a TV screen requires continuous awareness of the visual material, the associative images generated by it require certain intellectual and emotional efforts to assess and inhibit them. The nervous system (especially in children), being unable to withstand such an intense process of awareness, already after 15-20 minutes forms a protective inhibitory reaction in the form of a hypnoid state, which sharply limits the perception and processing of information, but enhances, as we have already noted, the processes capturing it and programming behavior.
According to sociological studies conducted by scientists from a number of countries, a child who grows up in such conditions, in adult life, constantly expects that the necessary information will come from outside. He is practically unable to independently generate his own ideas and judgments. Moreover, he has no desire for this.
And one more consequence of the influence of television technologies on the child. You, of course, have heard about such a very common phenomenon among children today, which doctors and psychologists call "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder." There are more and more children with this syndrome every year. Scientists tend to believe that the phenomenon of "child's inattention" to a certain extent is associated with the effect of flickering. It's all about the quick and unexpected change of pictures on the screen, and this destabilizes the child's attention and concentration. The child becomes just as impulsive, unable to concentrate on any activity for a long time. He needs constant external stimulation, which he is used to receiving from the screen.
It is important to remember that what surrounds a child in childhood determines his entire subsequent life.
The greatest invention of mankind - global computer networks - also contain potential threats. In IBM: Coping with Technological Brain Change, author Harry Small writes:
“… Since the Internet reduces the ability to concentrate and contemplate, then… thinking becomes fragmentary, reading becomes superficial. Users only view headings and annotations diagonally. And the areas of the brain responsible for abstract thinking and empathy are practically atrophied."
“The Internet creates only the illusion of the availability of information and technical equipment,” says the author of the monograph “The Origin of the Brain” Sergei Savelyev, an employee of the Research Institute of Human Morphology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. “For the so-called“digital natives”, the load on the brain is constantly decreasing. Even programmers today are not required to have the intellectual level that they needed 10-15 years ago. They write programs - like adding blocks. Intellectual degradation in such conditions is guaranteed."
The emerging body - or Internet - addiction changes not only the abilities and psychological qualities, but even changes the human brain. A group of Chinese scientists from the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research in Wuhan scanned the brains of 17 adults who were diagnosed with Internet addiction. Scientists compared these results with data from 16 healthy people. Medical research has convincingly shown that those who spend a lot of time on the Internet quickly develop two areas of the brain - the part responsible for short-term memory and the center responsible for making quick decisions. However, those areas of the brain that are responsible for detailed analysis, deep thinking about the problem, in essence, remain without stress.
The development of culture, spirituality, intellect, science is a matter for the future of the country. The state cannot exist if it does not contribute to the development of spirituality, culture and intelligence of its members. The state will not be able to strengthen its position in the world only with money or military force, especially the dictatorship of power.
Cultural issues today are intertwined with political and national security issues. In the modern world, the power and future of a country is determined not by resources and productive forces, but to a greater extent by science and art, the spirituality of the nation.
May our children be tomorrow among those who will conquer the vastness of space, build cities, create beautiful paintings and make the earth beautiful. But today, for a start, you just need to turn off the TV and help our children preserve their unique uniqueness.
