A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (1) reported that children and young adults (8-18 yrs) spend an average of 44.5 hours in front of a television screen, computer screen, media device (e.g., IPOD), or cell phone. Basically, this is their job plus some overtime. Is this the new addiction of the 21st century, or just a changing of the times where technologies for work and play merge?
Source:
1: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/Executive-Summary-Generation-M-Media-in-the-Lives-of-8-18-Year-olds.pdf
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Will our society see the effects of this sort of recreational behavior in 20-30 years? Perhaps, some do not see this as troubling. If so, what are the benefits?
ReplyDeleteThe internet is used all the time (I don't have the IPOD so I can't speak on that).
ReplyDeleteI would say Jarrod that as soon as we had nintendo (20 years ago?), that this kind of hyper-activity hyper-stimulation had already begun. And the foundations are probably in television before video games. My neighbor Tom and I had a conversation about this the Friday before last. He was reading quite a bit on the subject and made the point that television has had a profound effect on political discourse as well. Thoughts are abbreviated and people do not actually understand anything was his point. Since television/videogames/IPOD offer so much abbreviated content, when people are asked to discuss any topic at length they simply cannot do it. The example he gave was Lincoln's presidential debates. It was done in something like a town hall or city hall setting where a large crowd would assemble. The discussion would last the better part of the afternoon and when it was not finished at dinner, everyone would leave for dinner and then reconvene after dinner to finish the discussion. The point is that the topic itself was what was important and if it did not fit into an 8 minute slot between ads then that didn't really matter.
I would call this a dumbing down of the masses and Chomsky talks about this in Manufactured Consent (I think I wrote a book review on this if you're interested). I don't see this changing anytime soon, even though the very thing that has made the dumbing possible is the same thing that can cure it, through things like wikipedia and some of the newsfeeds I have on my igoogle page. Case in point facebook. How many people really use it to connect with people across the globe or create groups whose purpose is to better the community in some way. I'd say 85% of the people just post pics of themselves or IM each other. I try to post stuff on my page that is in someway thought-provoking but I haven't really seen anyone else do this.
Does a hypothetical dumbing down of the political discourse necessarily equate to a dumbing down of the masses? Your example of an extended conversation is Lincoln's presidential debates. Very few people had access to that, and I would guess most people in the lower wage categories didn't have the time to engage in those types of discussion. In that regard, I would say perhaps the newer media have changed political discourse, but also they have made the discourse more readily available to the general public. The question then is did it raise or lower the knowledge/involvement of the general public? I could see it going either way.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with saying technology is causing the aforementioned dumbing down of the masses is that I think it misplaces the cause entirely. Many people have access to wide ranges of technological media (the supposed cause and potential cure). How often do people use them to look up exactly what they want to hear (i.e. news sources like Fox NEWS, MSNBC, Huffington Post, etc.)? Twenty-five years ago, most people had some sort of access to news sources & other information without the internet or cable TV(library, books, etc.) but still did little. I think the true cause/cure is simply effort on the part of the populace. Effort to actually expand their world view and really challenge what they think they know. I'd say that's the problem more than technology. And in a way, Brent alluded to that by saying it can be the cure as well as the problem. Ultimately it's how the people use it.
So I sat down to browse through Netflix for something to watch tonight, and I came across a documentary called 'Stupidity' dealing much with this topic. It started off as less than impressive, but halfway through is picking up. You guys might both like it as it features interviews with a couple of your favorites (Maher & Chomsky). A couple ideas they bring up:
ReplyDeleteFirst, that companies may specifically dumb down their content because of the fact that people tend to be brand loyal. So once people start buying some product, they'll continue buying from that company. Therefore, target the audience at their earliest buying age. However, everybody ends up watching the same stuff, so we're all seeing this in practice.
Second, there's the idea that a lot of people prefer less-than-stimulating entertainment at night because they just want to 'veg out' after a hard day of work. I recall Jarrod bringing this up once while discussing movies - specifically that Kirk Herbstreit is a pretty smart guy, but he doesn't care for intellectual movies and just wants something to relax to. I think this may be the most striking difference between previous eras compared to our own on this discussion. What were the most regular forms of relaxation or after hours entertainment prior to the last 50 years? Did people really have options to let them veg out?
There are some other good ideas brought up in the documentary, so you both might want to check it out.
Your writing is improving Steve.
ReplyDeleteNow to your content. Chomsky points out the idea of media concision. He gives credit to someone else (in broadcasting), whose name I did not bother to remember. If the conversation is more brief, less is said, less information is transmitted in a meaningful way, and yes the discourse is therefore not as complex. If you don't like the terminology, I'll be more precise, just let me know.
Am I the only one noticing that I can't make more than one space between sentences?
Because I wasn't signed in? Wow.
ReplyDeleteNow I am signed in and it doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteI understand the terminology and that discourse could be less complex. What I'm saying is that as the quality of conversation has gone down, the accessibility to it has gone up. So did the common citizen ever really have access to quality discourse amongst the political elite? If not, then for many, they've only known the dumbed-down version, and if that's the case, it doesn't necessarily mean the citizenry has been dumbed-down. They could be more informed, but it's just that the ceiling may now be lower for many.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Brent’s first discussion on the “Lincoln Debates” I think it is possible that this story has become larger with time. Am I supposed to believe that more people (as a percentage) were generally concerned with these debates 150 years ago (e.g., farmers, blacksmiths, people never taught to read)? I doubt it. There are those that exist in our society now that have no problem sitting down for hours to debate and argue (Brent and I have had a few of these nights this semester). If Brent and I had access to an Abe Lincoln politician for a lengthy debate we would have stayed for hours as well. But a lot of people in the community would not, even to this day, care to sit and talk with a future politician.
ReplyDeleteNow to address accessibility. When people give their consent to a government in return for security (abbreviated definition obviously) then they also accepted the structure of order. Consider the number of people making decisions about your life that are ranked (by elected position) higher than you in our society. For instance, city council, mayor, state legislature, governor, state judges, senators, representatives, president, and Supreme Court justices. The bigger our society gets the less portion we hold as an individual citizen. If there were only 10,000 citizens our voices would be much stronger individually than if there are 300,000,000 citizens. Now (2009 C.E.), we only have access to lower-tier elected officials and we must join groups (special interest) that have money and connections in order for our concerns to be heard. This is perpetuated by having higher-tiered elected officials concentrated where only those with power and money can reach them and it turns many citizens away from politics or public debate.