“No one doubts today that we are destroying nature; but very few realize that there is a true destruction of human beings underway.” (V.W. Setzer)
Nothing happens by chance.
In our last post, we talked about Anthroposophy – a beautiful and passionate science that sees the human being as a whole, in its dimensions: physical, emotional, and spiritual. In the week this post was published, I learned that my son's school has been playing DVDs at the end of class every day to entertain the students. This deeply upset me because, in my view, the school should focus on entertaining children with games that stimulate their creativity and free expression, which television certainly does not do.
While searching for articles that would support reasons why television is harmful to young children (to present to the school), I found a complete, fantastic one that compiles data from numerous studies, written by Prof. Dr. Valdemar W. Setzer, who is a Full Professor (as he says: “retired, but not inactive”) in the Department of Computer Science at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics at USP (IME), in addition to having been the founder and director of the Electronic Computing Center at USP (CCE) and the Center for Computer Education at IME, and, “coincidentally,” has been a member of the Anthroposophical Society since 1971. He has published 12 technical and educational books in Brazil, Germany, England, and Finland.
His article, titled: “Negative Effects of Electronic Media on Children, Adolescents, and Adults,” available online, presents, with scientific backing from over a hundred articles, 19 harmful aspects of television, video games, computers, and the internet, especially for children and adolescents: 1) Excess weight and obesity; 2) Health risks; 3) Attention and hyperactivity problems; 4) Aggressiveness and antisocial behavior; 5) Depression and fear; 6) Bullying; 7) Induction of macho attitudes; 8) Desensitization of feelings; 9) Induction of the mindset that the world is violent and violence does not lead to punishment; 10) Harm to reading; 11) Decreased school performance and harm to cognition; 12) Confusion of fantasy with reality; 13) Isolation and other social problems; 14) Acceleration of development (such as early sexuality); 15) Harm to creativity; 16) Autism; 17) The problem of addiction; 18) Induction to consumerism; 19) Problems caused by the internet (physical and psychological).
Upon reading the full article, we come across alarming data, for example, the relationship between a child's time spent watching TV and the increase in cholesterol levels and blood pressure, as well as hyperactivity.
Regarding the issue of hyperactivity, the text of the article is so comprehensive that it is worth transcribing: “The production of hyperactivity by TV is easy to understand: healthy children do not stay still; they are always doing something, as that is how they learn, develop muscles, coordination, etc. A healthy child only stays still if they are listening to a story: then one can observe that they seem to be gazing into infinity, as they are internally imagining the characters, the environment, and the action. In the case of TV, the child remains physically static and, as we have seen, in a state of drowsiness (see item 1), having nothing to imagine, as the images come ready and succeed each other quickly. When the device is turned off, the child has an explosion of activity to compensate for the time they spent immobile and passive; the parents, disturbed, put them back in front of the TV to ‘calm them down’...”.
We contacted Dr. Setzer for an interview via email, in which he kindly enriches our conversation on the topic. Click this link to enjoy it!
Until next time!
