UPDATE: Parents – not TV – may determine kids’ activity levels, OSU study says

StatesmanJournal,com

Parents – not TV – may determine kids’ activity levels, OSU study says

The following was submitted by Oregon State University Research News and Communications:

CORVALLIS – Researchers at Oregon State University have confirmed what we knew all along – children in this country are increasingly sedentary, spending too much time sitting and looking at electronic screens.

But it’s not necessarily because of the newest gee-whiz gadgets – parents play a major factor in whether young children are on the move.

In two studies out online today in a special issue of the journal Early Child Development and Care devoted to “Parental Influences of Childhood Obesity,” OSU researchers examined how parenting style – whether a strict but loving parent or a less-involved and more permissive parent – was associated with sedentary behavior.

Overall, they found that children who had “neglectful” parents, or ones who weren’t home often and self-reported spending less time with their kids, were getting 30 minutes more screen time on an average each week day.

More disturbing to lead author David Schary – all of the children ages 2 to 4 were sitting more than several hours per day. . . Read Complete Report

Television and the Hive Mindset

from Before its News

Friday, June 22, 2012 10:00

Sixty-four years ago this month, six million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare.

It was the night before Halloween, 1938. At 8 p.m. CST, the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not waiting to hear Welles’ explanation at the end of the program that it had all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien invaders.

Later, psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University’s Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing. . . . Read Complete Report

Entertainment – Enslaving the Minds of the Masses