The Audience: Video Boy

In the beginning there was Superman. Today, reproducing like oversexed mutants, there is a whole squadron of superduper do-gooders streaking across the TV screen. They are not only faster than a speeding bullet, but they can also do things like liquefy and multiply, or fell a foe with a laser-beam glance. The skies are guarded by Roger Ramjet, the seas by Marine Boy, the barnyard by Super Chicken. What they can't handle, Granite Man, Frogman, Coil Man, Spider Man, Liquid Man, Aquaman, Multi Man and Birdman can. Yet of all the offspring of TV's comic book culture, the most lethargic is Video Boy. He doesn't do anything. He just sits there, sucks his thumb and stares at the tube.

The typification of the TV tot, Video Boy was raised by an electronic baby sitter. The first word he uttered was "Colgate"; the first phrase he learned to read was "The End." When he puts on his raincoat, he becomes a secret agent. When his mother presses him to finish his carrots, he mutters "it's clobberin' time" just like The Thing. When Dad takes over the set to watch football, he and his sister play Dating Game with her dolls. He doesn't climb trees; he watches Tarzan do it. At three, he spends five hours a week before the magic box. By the time he is twelve, he will devote 25 hours to weekly viewing, or more time than he will spend with his parents or in school or church.

Left to Right. Is Video Boy a freak in the making? The question frankly baffles many parents. Though they may admit that TV can expose new channels of experience, there is still the lingering fear that some day Video Boy is going to tie a towel around his neck and try to fly off the garage roof like Bat Fink; or, if somebody crosses him in the playground, he may poke his fingers in his eyes in the style of the Three Stooges. But mostly, with misty recollections of taffy pulls and swimming holes, parents are bothered by a vague feeling that, somehow, as one mother puts it, "life should be lived, not watched."

The reaction is understandable. De spite the acknowledged importance of TV in the life of a modern child, remarkably little study has been done in the field. To draw any meaningful conclusions, researchers must first find a comparable group of children who have not been exposed to TV; but alas, in the U.S. there is no such group. What studies have been made are largely peripheral. Yes, Video Boy devotes half an hour less to playtime than did the pre-TV child. No, TV does not discourage reading, but if anything, stimulates it. Yes, TV does help develop such prereading skills as scanning from left to right. No, normal viewing does not impair eyesight. Yes, TV has replaced reading and storytelling sessions with the parent. No, TV has no significant effect on school work; viewing has not encroached on school-related activities, but merely supplanted the time that used to be devoted to comic books and radio.