Nature and Society
December 2007 - January 2008 edition

Book review:

Remotely Controlled

Aric Sigman, Vermillion, London, 2007 edn

• Children under three should see no screen entertainment
• After this age, television viewing of good quality programs should be limited to an hour a day
• Teenagers should be limited to one and a half hours a day
• And for adults, two hours a day.

These recommendations are for all screen use (DVDs, computer games etc.) for normally healthy people. For people with ADHD, obesity, suffering sleep problems, attentional disorders or depression, the daily viewing time should be considerably less.

These are the clear recommendations reached on page 262 after Dr Aric Sigman’s comprehensive survey of the effects of television viewing on mental, physical and social wellbeing, drawing mainly on evidence from the US and the UK.

Sigman – like Jerry Mander before him (Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, 1977) – makes it clear that abundant and authoritative medical and epidemiological research shows that program type (documentary, soap opera, sport, news, game show) makes little difference to the well-being outcomes. Mander, in fact aims directly at what might appear to be the most difficult target, the David Attenborough type of natural history program and other documentaries to demonstrate the harm the medium does. Sigman shares Mander’s position that news and documentary programs distort reality in order to arrest and hold the viewer’s attention. In fact, these programs are more insidious in their impact: they get past our guard as, although we expect special effects in dramas and exaggeration in advertisements, we assume documentaries are not significantly enhanced, edited, cut, spliced and scripted.

Sigman also deals directly and at length with those who reject the sort of viewing restrictions he proposes. He says we need to conceptualise all time spent watching television as a health hazard and to think in terms of dose and overdose, pointing out that most of the negative effects of television reported in the medical literature are associated with watching two hours a day or less. Experts (usually in media studies, not the research team) call for “everything in moderation” and he asks what the comforting term “moderation” means when it applies to our children’s health and well-being. He points to the fact that most people enjoy television and find it soothing, so they easily rationalize what is – according to the medical literature (though not the societal norm) – abuse of the medium by themselves and others. Sigman spends some time debating how “abuse” is defined in other medical contexts and demonstrates its applicability to television viewing.

Among many physiological systems, Sigman looks closely at the endocrine system and at how television distorts the natural occurrence of dopamine, growth hormone, ghrelin, cortisol, adrenaline, oxytocin, melatonin, leptin and prolactin. He shows how television may stimulate particular hormones which, in turn, cause early onset of puberty.

Sigman, being the parent of a young daughter, is wisely inclined to give special attention to early childhood development. He quotes the Jesuits’ adage “Give me a boy till the age of seven and I will show you the man” and then explores the effects of giving a child to television for four or more hours a day when the growing brain and developing mind are at their most plastic.

As one example of many the author uses to illustrate the way television distorts social reality and marginalizes victims, Sigman examines the depiction of divorce in television dramas. As a psychologist, Sigman is well aware of the trauma of dissolving adult relationships on children and the prolonged unsettling in the years following divorce. And yet on television divorce is portrayed as a lifestyle option; a television drama simply doesn’t provide enough time to depict it in any other way. He points to the unremittingly positive stereotyping in television dramas of children in divorced families. He pinpoints American programs in which a young boy typically meets his mother’s new love-interest who address the boy with “Hey big guy”, throws him a football and they bond and are soulmates before the end of the episode. In other programs the man picks up one of the children and the child takes to him without batting an eyelid – despite the fact that many children in this situation in real life have been physically abused.

Sigman argues that we prefer television portrayals of lifestyles which leave us feeling good; we are comforted by programs which show that divorce doesn’t affect children as much as evidence from the real world indicates. Program producers don’t want their plot lines straying off into confusing or unresolved tangents or conflicting with their own highly-divorced lifestyles.

Drawing on his own experience in television production, Sigman describes how television producers despise individual viewers who write in with comments on their programs – a depressing but believable part of the book.

The author does not shy away from providing useful guidance on selecting the better television programs and movies for children; in doing so he also proposes criteria for those that should be avoided. He goes further than this and shows just how children should watch these shows to minimise the risk of harm. In doing so he does not make it easy for parents as he has a role for them no less demanding of time, judgement and interaction than required for reading to children. But we know that good parenting cannot be replaced by electronic media.

The writer of this review has watched no more than ten hours of television a year since reading Jerry Mander’s book in the 1970s. He found this update on the deleterious effects on health and well-being, which have been backed up by research not available when Mander wrote, convinced him that his television-free choice 30 years ago was – and continues to be – the right one.

Keith Thomas ©