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Executive Director of TV-Free America

Thank you for holding these hearing and for allowing me to submit this testimony to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

On behalf of TV-Free America's 30,000 members (parents, educators and health professionals), I would like to state our belief that Channel One is a powerfully negative influence in America's public schools.

TV-Free America (TVFA) is a national nonprofit organization that encourages Americans to reduce, dramatically and voluntarily, the amount of television they watch in order to promote richer, healthier, more productive lives, families and communities.  TVFA's flagship program, National TV-Turnoff Week, takes place each year during the last week in April.  Last month, an estimated
6 million Americans participated in the event which was endorsed by more that
60 national health and education organizations, 31 U.S. Governors and U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher.

The issue that most concerns our organization is the excessive quantity of television that American youth watch--almost four hours per day--and the extent to which mandatory TV-watching in schools (which is what Channel One is) informs our children that watching TV is something that is encouraged by our education system.

The truth is, few messages could be more detrimental to the health and education of our children.   Noting that obesity levels are at epidemic proportions for both children and adults, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher announced last spring that he was supporting TV-Free America's annual effort to challenge Americans to reduce the amount of time they spend watching television.  To highlight his involvement, Dr. Satcher joined 300 students at Manor Woods Elementary in Ellicott City, MD on April 21, where he unveiled a special "Surgeon General's Prescription for Less TV."  Copies of the prescription were distributed to students who were encouraged to tape them onto TV screens at home as a reminder of healthy alternatives to the tube.

In his remarks, Dr. Satcher said "We have the most sedentary generation of young people in American history.  Reducing the amount of TV our children watch is one way to encourage more healthful activity."  Satcher pointed to the 1996 Surgeon General's report on physical activity, which found that regular physical activity "reduces the risk of developing a wide range of illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer.  It also reduces feelings of depression and anxiety, helps control weight, and helps maintain healthy bones, muscles and joints."

Joining the Surgeon General in promoting the health benefits of TV-Turnoff Week was Undersecretary of Agriculture for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Shirley Watkins.  Echoing the Surgeon General, Watkins said "Turning off the TV...is an excellent opportunity for Americans to kick the couch potato habit."  She added that "Americans need to get up off the couch, shelve the remote....and start living in a more healthful manner."  She further suggested that Americans ought to cut the amount of time spent watching TV by 50 percent or more.

Today, children spend almost twice as much time watching TV as they do in school, yet  numerous studies demonstrate a strong link between the increase in television-watching and the decline in reading and literacy.  In conjunction with the 1995 National TV-Turnoff Week, the U.S. Department of Education released a report showing that reading comprehension among young people had reached an all-time low.  In his statement, Education Secretary Richard Riley attributed the decline to "too many students...spending too little time reading and too much time watching mind-numbing television."  Most educators agree that excessive television-watching:

• Induces cognitive passivity;
• Stifles/displaces creativity, reflection and imagination;
• Displaces opportunities for play and social interaction;
• Shortens attention spans and increases hyperactivity;
• Cultivates visual processing skills incompatible with print-based skills.

Despite all this evidence, Channel One's underlying message is that watching television, commercials and all, is something that should be encouraged.

Millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for substance abuse as defined in the official psychiatric manual, according to Rutgers University psychologist Robert Kubey.  Heavy TV viewers exhibit six dependency symptoms--two more than necessary to arrive at a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse.  These include using TV as a sedative; indiscriminate viewing; feeling loss of control while viewing; feeling angry with oneself for watching so much; inability to stop watching; and suffering withdrawal when forced to stop watching TV.

In her book, Endangered Minds (Simon & Schuster, 1990), psychologist Jane Healy documents how passive television-watching actually leads to diminished neural development and brain growth in children.  Dr. William Dietz, a director at the Centers for Disease control in Atlanta, has conducted extensive studies that link television-watching to obesity and eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia.  Dr. Victor Strasburger, a pediatrician and leading authority on the subject, states that television's most subtle and insidious effects may be in shaping viewers' perceptions regarding social and racial norms, gender roles, conflict resolution and patterns of courtship and sexual gratification that just don't exist anywhere else but on TV.

The health consequences of America's TV habit are gaining increasing levels of attention.  As Mohammad N. Akhter, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in a op-ed published in the News & Record (Greensboro, NC) last April 22;

We are literally living ourselves sick, and television plays a large role in this downward spiral.  Most criticism of television has focused on content--on the sex, violence and cynically degraded sensibility that pervade the medium and therefore our homes.  This is an important battle.  Yet no less important is the sheer amount of time that Americans spend watching TV.  Kids typically spend three hours a day in front of the tube, and adults even more.  On average, Americans watch TV the equivalent of 56 days--nonstop-- per year.

Such numbers are well-known, but the implications often go unnoted.  TV viewing is the principal source of inactivity, and inactivity has become a nationwide problem.  It is related to obesity which is becoming a national norm.  Over half of all Americans are overweight, and roughly a third are clinically obese.  The percentage of overweight children aged 6-17 has doubled since 1968.  It is not coincidental that one recent study showed that, between 1982 and 1994, the incidence of Type II diabetes--the kind closely linked with weight--has quadrupled among kids.

There's also what economists call the "opportunity cost."  When kids are parked in front of the TV, they're not engaged in the activities--running, jumping, playing--that are essential to the formation of healthy bones and muscles which help prevent future problems and injuries.  (Even pro baseball scouts have observed that kids today have weaker and less resilient arms because they spend so much time watching TV instead of playing catch).  When kids stare at TV, they don't use their imaginations and create their own games.  They simply absorb the cues on how to solve problems, what to eat, what to wear, what to nag their parents for, and most of these things are either expensive or unhealthful or--most likely--both.

The daily broadcast of Channel One in 12,000 public schools is a bad idea for many reasons.  Especially telling is a 1998 University of Wisconsin/Economic Policy Institute study showing that Channel One costs taxpayers an annual $1.8 billion in lost class time.  Yet from our standpoint, the key issue is that schools should be the last place where commercial TV-watching is promoted and what the American Medical Association calls "the couch potato syndrome" is cultivated.   Parents, who are so often unaware of Channel One's presence in their children's schools, need to be informed by initiatives such as the one this committee is taking.

We applaud your efforts and encourage the Congress, state legislatures and local school boards to help get Channel One out of America's public schools.  Thank you.
 

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