Let me first start by stating this article was written from the perspective of a 21 year old American, so to my fellow Gen Z comrades, this is for you.
If I asked you to name your favorite childhood movie, book, or song, likely your answer will be something I’m familiar with, along with everyone else born in the mid-to-late 90’s and early 2000’s. From Disney to Nickelodeon, to Cartoon Network to even Adult Swim; it’s safe to say we all grew up watching the same shows, listening to the same songs, and essentially experiencing the same childhood. We shared the same role models, embodied the same traits of our favorite heroes, and sang the same songs from our favorite musicians; not only did we all engage in the same daily hobbies, but even to this day, we engage in them frequently.
And too much of anything, is never a good thing.
The human brain is one of the universe’s most malleable creations, as the world continues to change around us, we inevitably change with it. One of the main influences on this change, is our exposure to the world, and from an early age we’re submerged in exposure through the screens of our TV’s viewing life from the viewpoint of someone else, which, not to mention, is scripted. Everything about these characters from their interests, responses, fashion sense, and even their names are superficial, of course that’s nowhere on our minds when we’re lost in the plot. (I don’t know about you, but as a child I believed all characters, animated or not, were real; and when I found out they weren’t, I assumed they were all fake. I was around 7 years old by the time I was able to differentiate actors from animations.) As we watch these films, we subconsciously pick up on the subtle messages that they provide. Word of mouth is very powerful and seeing others interact with certain things makes us want to experience them as well, it’s why we subconsciously love iPhones so much because they resemble the pear phone we saw on early Nickelodeon shows like Zoey 101 or iCarly. Over time we begin to emulate the things we see on TV because we believe it to be the epitome of how we should go about our own lives. As adults we spend so much time providing for our families that it leaves limited time to spend with each other, and nowadays parents tend to keep their kids under control with the help of technology like tablets as well as television. As children we take after the examples set in front of us, with more screen time than human interaction, we take after the tendencies shown in video games and YouTube videos. Of course this susceptibility to influence goes both ways, studies show that exposure to educational programs like Sesame Street can lead to higher IQ’s, whereas excessive exposure to entertainment leads to lower IQ’s and can even affect your cognitive ability (NY Times 2019).
Previous research has acknowledged that early screen use in children 5 years and under serve as a formative element in development (Canadian Paediatric Society, 2017). I’m sure we can all agree we were more active outside as kids than the current generation, and while we didn’t necessarily have touch screen phones and tablets as young as they do now, we came up in the beginning ages of social media, so by the age of ten you likely had 2 of these 3 things: a gaming console, a computer, and/or a Facebook account (especially my 2000 babies). As for our earlier childhood, we can all recall watching cartoons that were not only entertaining, but educational as well, teaching language skills and even math. As we got older, our preferences begin to lean more towards entertainment, and from there the marathons started, the term “binge watching” coming into fruition. Looking back on it now, I miss whenever Nickelodeon would have those periods where they didn’t air any episodes and encouraged kids to go play outside; of course I likely just changed the channel, but I understood the message nevertheless. I just wish I understood the severity of excessive lounging earlier on, but we’d all change something of the past if given the chance. According to the Canadian Paediatric Society, correlations between early unrestricted tv usage and self-reported cases of social isolation, victimization, proactive aggression and other anti-social behaviors are as analogous to that of post-traumatic stress from the military; it has psychological and psychosocial effects.
These effects include influence on our personal interests, hobbies, and even our taste in others. American films tend to follow certain beauty standards, and we don’t notice it in the beginning, but by constantly glorifying a specific group of people matching certain criteria, we view them as superior. And by contrast, we view others, even ourselves, as inferior. Not to mention the lifestyles that are portrayed in more popular mainstream projects, we spend so much of our lives engaging in fantasies that differ from our current situations that it has made us yearn for something different. Now there’s social media to add fuel to the fire; instead of characters on a screen, we idolize celebrities more than ever, along with influencers and popular content creators. Never before have we focused so much of our time staying caught up with the Joneses, neglecting our own lives and goals, wishing we were somewhere that we’re not, doing something that we’re not. It’s a topic that isn’t widely discussed mainly because these tech-based companies and producers profit from us being distracted, but it’s safe to say a common root to some of our mental issues stems from the information and content that we take in on a regular basis.
“We suffer more in imagination than in reality”
-Anonymous
A wise man once said that life is 5% what happens to you, while 95% of it is how you respond moving forward. It starts and ends in our brain; it is the control center for all that is human. The circumstances of our ongoing lives are determined based on our past actions, and our experience of these circumstances, is based entirely on perception. TV can also affect how we view certain things, too much focus on luxury and lavish lifestyles can make us disregard the subtle beauty of nature, and suddenly a minimalist lifestyle isn’t as sexy. By emphasizing and praising one side of the coin, you’re subconsciously belittling the other. All the hype surrounding foreign cars, nice jewelry and gorgeous women causes us to not appreciate anything less ideal, when in reality, it’s all just a matter of opinion. Touching back on the unwritten beauty standards, everyone is free to like what they like and present themselves how they wish. I would just like to highlight that many of our choices and preferences stem from when we were more impressionable. It’s been demonstrated time after time that children will react in the same manner as their peers in any given situation. Babies and toddlers get themselves into sticky situations all the time, and sometimes they may fall or hurt themselves in other ways. In more common situations, they respond by reading the room, it’s the way we as humans understand what’s right and wrong. As for emotional intelligence, it definitely wasn’t taught to us in school. For as long as we can remember, we’ve only seen people handle emotions on screen and in everyday life, but even today’s common responses and coping mechanisms aren’t the healthiest. From drug and alcohol dependency, to violence, to even productive escape routes like sports, art and music; we all have our unique ways of coping with life, but one of our biggest teachers has been and continues to be the external forces we engage with on the regular.