Brainwashing Babies

In America this week, two advertising executives launched a round-the-clock television channel aimed at babies. At an age when their brains are just forming the ability to understand human beings, infants are now being targeted for hours of screen time. Their parents are being told that "leading experts" say it's good for them.
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Links continue to grow between TV and attention deficit disorder, childhood obesity, poor acquisition of language and aggression. Yet parents seem increasingly unwilling to limit their children's screen time.


"Ten years ago," says David Burke, White Dot's British Director "the world was shocked to hear of infants tied to their chairs and ignored in a Chinese orphanage. Looking at the launch of BabyFirst TV, I wonder why we got so upset. Did they just need better quality programmes?"

American Academy of Pediatrics says: "During the first two years of life children need good, positive interaction with other children and adults. Too much television can negatively affect early brain development. This is especially true at younger ages, when learning to talk and play with others is so important."

The Academy based their advice on studies such as one at the University of Washington in 2004, showing that early television exposure is associated with attentional problems at age 7. Before that, work in 1996 by Dr Sally Ward of the Speech, Language and Hearing Centre in London showed that background noise from television and the attendant lack of interaction with parents leads to delayed acquisition of speech in young children.

New Baby TV Channel

Eye Candy

Television has been called bubblegum for the eyes. But is it halal? I have not watched television for so long that I am truly shocked when I see it for a brief moment. Islam tells us to avert our gaze from what is haram.

Has anyone else noticed how the news programmes are designed to brainwash? They bombard you with multiple pictures, speech, subtitles, all at once. This is a classic technique for subliminal programming. Designed to enter your mind through the backdoor, bypassing the filters of the intellect. You don't have time to register the messages being thrown at you, so it all gets absorbed.

How can anyone find television aesthetically pleasing? It is brimming with violence and vulgarity. What a mystery that people give up their valuable time to watch it...

"Television is the only reality"

Propaganda has become more sophisticated and possibly more effective than it was during the Soviet years, when television was a tool used to sustain an ideology. The goal today is simpler: to support the Kremlin and its corporate interests. 'It's a magic process now,' Anna Kachkaeva, who broadcasts a weekly interview show on Radio Liberty, told me. Kachkaeva, who is also the head of the television department at Moscow State University, went on: 'There is no censorship - it's much more advanced. I would call it a system of contacts and agreements between the Kremlin and the heads of television networks. There is no need to start every day with instructions. It is all done with winks and nods. They meet at the end of the week, and the problem, for TV and even in the printed press, is that self-censorship is worse than any other kind. Journalists know - they can feel - what is allowed and what is not.'...

Who's killing Putin's enemies? Part 1

Who's killing Putin's enemies? Part 2

Is TV Bad for the Brain?

Michael Shayer, Professor of Applied Psychology at King’s College London, claims that 11 and 12-year-olds are now two to three years behind where they were 15 years go in terms of cognitive and conceptual development. In his volume and heaviness test, children are asked to hold a brass block and a Plasticine block of identical size, one in each hand. In 1976, 57 per cent of boys and 27 per cent of girls realised that the Plasticine block would displace the same amount of water, if immersed, as the brass block. Thirty years later only 17 per cent of either sex get it right. That is a staggering change. But Professor Shayer is reluctant to speculate on the causes. He thinks a decline in hands-on play, more TV and less outside play space may be factors. But he is not sure.

If the screen is a problem, why can’t adults just switch it off? You don’t need a “conceptual framework” to find the off button. What comes through every discussion on this subject is the extraordinary weakness of parents, who simply can’t face the hassle of saying no. And when they try, they face increasingly strong resistance. For the real, hidden danger of many TV channels and video games is that they are designed to feed an anti-authority culture.

Sue Palmer’s book Toxic Childhood quotes the psychologist Mark Crispin-Miller: “It’s part of the official advertising world view that your parents are creeps, teachers are weirdos and idiots, authority figures laughable and nobody can really understand children except the corporate sponsor.” This may sound overblown, unless you’ve watched Nickelodeon. The Rugrats are pulling the rug from under parents who weren’t too sure of their footing anyway. Guess which TV character a recent BBC poll of 5,000 parents found was the “role model” who most influenced their children? Gulp. Bart Simpson.

Are Parents the Poisoners? (Times Online)