Many of us raised from the 1960’s through to the 1980’s will recall the tangible horror we felt the first time we read George Orwell’s 1984 (1) as part of our English studies in High School. The prospect of an authoritarian State where Big Brother unrelentingly broadcasts messages of propaganda, compliance and subservience to the masses in all public places, as well as in homes through the use of a variety of screens, evoked a sense of revulsion and aroused the passionate conviction that we would never allow such a thing to happen in our lifetime.
But has it happened – with a twist?
Being raised as a child in the 60’s included for many the first trend towards using the TV as an important part of good parenting. This medium was transforming from the dullness of black and white to the vibrancy of colour and the emergence of shows like Play School in the mid 1960’s seemed to give children a head-start on their schooling. Children were learning to count, to sing, to recognise the alphabet before their formal schooling began. There was also the additional bonus of utilising the TV screen as an unofficial and unpaid babysitter while working mums and dads tended to their domestic chores at the end of a busy day.
For older children, shows like Blue Peter provided a similar service: children learned useful skills like how to make things and collect things to support their community, inspired and modelled by trustworthy and animal loving adults like John, Peter and Val, who could award the very much sought after Blue Peter badges for viewer participation. (2)
There would be an understandable tendency for us to look back nostalgically and fondly at how simple and wholesome things were back then in the days of the beginning of our relationship with screens, reminiscing about the quaintness and ostensible innocence of those first black and white TV shows.
However, is such a view truly accurate when it comes to the long-term effects of this apparently naïve beginning? Could this lifelong relationship with screens be more correctly conceptualised as ‘By their fruits shall ye know them’, (3) particularly when we consider the state of play 50–60 years later? Not only do we now live in a world characterised by global TV events and 24/7 access to innumerable TV channels, but public screens blast out their messages in shopping centres and at sporting and community events the world over, and next to no one leaves home without their personal screen. Did Orwell’s vision carry some credibility and have we allowed it to become a reality?
Today we and our children have regular and intimate access to personal computers and hand-held devices like mobile phones. Children, often from infancy, are placed in front of screens as a babysitting or pacifying tool, at times with little to no discernment of the appropriateness of the content for them. Paediatricians and other professionals report serious addictions to screens in children as young as four, (4) and many of us have witnessed the almost impossible task of separating some teenagers from their phones or gaming devices.
Researchers are finding that screen addictions are contributing to sleep deprivation, mood instability, cognitive impairment and dysfunction, as well as social isolation. (4) Clearly the current state of play in our long-term relationship with screens is anything but wholesome and is something that needs to be addressed through a collective discussion and sense of responsibility.
Could such a discussion benefit from the awareness that this is not exclusively about the ‘digital revolution’, nor about ‘the kids of today’, but rather goes back to the way in which we first went blindly into a relationship with the TV screen over 50 years ago?
The common phrase ‘Marry in haste and repent in leisure’ applies equally on a societal level as it does between a husband and wife in our undiscerned relationship with screens.
Whilst we may well marvel at the way the technology has developed over a relatively short timeframe, do we not also need to consider that the way in which we have applied and used, or misused, this technology, has had some highly deleterious effects on our children, on our health and on our social relationships?
By taking the long view, is it possible that we may all realise that societal ills such as screen addiction do not emerge out of the blue. They arise through the many footprints that go before them – footprints that may seem completely innocent or unremarkable at the time but later can be understood to have led to undesired and unhealthy consequences.
And if such subtle but methodical imprints are the bedrock of major phenomena like screen addiction, what other imprints are we laying down that may have similar repercussions for future generations?
Could ‘the lesson of screens’ serve as an invaluable one for us to discern all aspects of our parenting and education models for long term viability and health – for true wholesomeness for us all?
REFERENCES
(1) 1984 by George Orwell. First published by Secker and Warburg, UK, 1949.
(2) Classic TV Blue Peter- online; accessed 05 August, 2018
(3) Matthew 7:16-20 King James Version of the Bible. Cited by the Bible Gateway – online: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A16-20&version=KJV
Accessed 05 August, 2018
(4) Everything May NOT Be Awesome …Are Smartphones Hurting Our Children? Associate Professor Michael Nagel. A presentation at the Generation Next Mental Health and Wellbeing of Young People Conference, Brisbane, 25 May, 2018.