Column:
Who knew? Television might be good for you
Published April 29, 2005
As I spend more time in college, I feel I’m actually becoming dumber with each passing day. I originally thought this might have to do with mind-numbing 500-person lectures where my only challenge is a 50-question multiple-choice test every now and then. But really, it’s because I stopped watching television.
Yes, despite all the times your mother told you to stop melting your brain in front of the television, it turns out watching it might actually make all of us smarter. Well, maybe some of us.
Steve Johnson, author of the forthcoming book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," recently wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine explaining that modern television has developed to actually challenge the mind rather than dull it, as popular opinion would have us believe. This effect is something he calls "the sleeper curve," in which "the most debased forms of mass diversion — video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms — turn out to be nutritional after all."
Upon hearing this, I rushed to my television, though this is TV Turn-Off Week, thinking, "Joy! Once again I can watch "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" without shame and without sacrificing my intellectual superiority complex." Johnson argues, however, that not all television programs will make you smarter.
Johnson discusses the cognitive demands of shows often berated for being gruesome and violent, such as "24" or "The Sopranos," and he points out that because of the many interlacing plot threads and the viewer’s expectation to make connections to earlier or off-screen events, many television dramas can demand more from a viewer than the narrative structure of some books.
Watching some shows, such as "ER" or "The West Wing," can even improve your vocabulary. Johnson writes, "The dialogue ... doesn’t talk down to its audiences. It rushes by ... The characters talk faster in these shows, but the truly remarkable thing about the dialogue is not purely a matter of speed; it’s the willingness to immerse the audience in information that most viewers won’t understand."
And what about all those reality shows? Johnson contends even some of those might not be so bad. So long as you stick to shows such as "Survivor" or "The Apprentice," which include a certain amount of strategy, their plots help our brains become cognitively flexible and even teach us to develop social networks.
Of course, don’t think networks are making their shows more challenging with viewers’ intellectual development in mind. Johnson writes, "The entertainment industry isn’t increasing the cognitive complexity of its products for charitable reasons. The sleeper curve exists because there’s money to be made by making culture smarter."
Well, at least they’re no longer profiting by making us dumber. So, finish reading this newspaper, go watch some television and learn something. No, not "The Simpsons," but feel free to watch those "Sopranos" DVDs to your heart’s content, because television isn’t just for the simple-minded any longer.
