In the book were reading, Gender, Race and Class in the Media, we've been reading a section on media's effect on kids. I started looking at the shows kids watch and the medias stimulation on them relating to ADHD. I got a lot from the book and a really good article HERE. This statement out of the whole article really stood out to me:"Over the past thirty years, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has emerged from the obscurity of cognitive psychology research laboratories to become the leading psychiatric disorder of childhood in the United States. A recent study conducted at the Mayo Clinic stated that as many as 7.4 to 16 percent of all children and adolescents suffer from this disorder."
I was really shocked about this and that's when I started looking at kids shows over 30 years ago and kids shows now. Shows back then like Hopalong Cassidy and The Lone Ranger and The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show played in the 50's and 40's are similar to a lot of the 'shoot em' up' and zany characters and absurd plots that pulled Children in today. But there is one big difference I noticed, the colors, and the dialogue dynamics. Now media has shows with popping colors and jumping from scene to scene focusing much less on dialogue and interaction. Just thinking about that could cause reason on the rising levels of ADHD in kids now. They have been conditioned to these jumping color popping shows when stuff in real life is not like that, especially in classrooms. Kids go into 'zones' watching these shows driven to keep the kids attention at all times, which has also made them more susceptible to the media consumerism which follow the dynamics of the shows.
So its no wonder kids are at the highest levels of distraction and are needed special aid to help them. Media conglomerates are so consumed with wanting to sell their products, do they realize the negative effects they are having on the children's education? These kids are the future! they may just be wanting to get them to be buyers now, but they'll be sorry when these ADHD 'bred' kids will be the leaders of our country. I'm not trying to say that kids with ADHD are bad or dumb because I myself struggle with ADHD and they're are medicines that help and are fantastic but its not okay that kids are given this, its no longer a genetic disorder but something that the media society has put on them.
I totally agree with you 100%. Coincidentally, I did a blog on something similar. Kids just can't focus on anything now because everything in real life seems boring to them after being immersed in action movies and television shows. It's like when you eat fast food, the chemicals that the food contains stimulate pleasure centers of the brain and release natural opioids which causes addiction. It leads people to be addicted to fast food because they get a high that doesn't last very long. I think it is similar to what is happening with kids and ADHD. They can't concentrate because they are not being stimulated by lots of action, violence, and vivid cinematography.
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