Jan
20
Old Fashioned Books Don’t Rot Your Brain, But This Will -
January 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment
According to Wired, television news could erode your sense of empathy and turn you into a sociopath. We avid readers have known this all along so it’s worth a hearty “I told you so” to the T.V. gods – Go ahead, say it.
Here is the article (titled: “Twitter, Facebook Won’t Make You Immoral — But TV News Might“), and here is the paragraph from the article that gives me the creeps:
“If compassion can only be activated by sustained attention, which is prevented by fast-cut editing, then the ability to be genuinely moved by another’s story could atrophy. It might even fail to properly develop in children, whose brains are being formed in ways that will last a lifetime.”
As a mom, whenever a story is skewed to the development of a child’s brain my alarm bells start to clang and an icy chill hits my heart.
This morning to my young daughter: “Sorry baby, the quick cuts in Dora The Explorer are hurting your ability to connect emotionally with humans so we need to turn off the video and read a book.”
Her reply: Â Silent continuation of staring at the boob tube.
Gulp.
We are taking a field trip to the independent book store this weekend. Join us?
Thought: Will imbedded video links in our ebooks lead to an inability to absorb emotional content when we read? How will this train our brains to react to emotional cues in real life? Would you kill the last tree on earth to make a paper book if it meant preserving your human emotions?