Screens

A Necessary Evil or Windows Into Infinity?

An idea becomes generally accepted as true in two ways: It is true and has survived repeated criticism and maintains its position as true, or, it has not been criticised and has been accepted widely enough that people assume it’s true. But why assume something is true just because it’s been widely accepted?

“If others think it true then it must be true.” Why?

In a society that either does not have any tradition of criticism or where such traditions are viewed largely unfavourably, the meme of ‘criticise that idea’ might not even have passed through the mind of the receiver, either because they have not been introduced to the idea of criticism or, more likely, other memes have shoved criticism out of their minds in favour of blind acceptance by equating non-criticism as virtuous. Depending on the context, this virtue can come in different guises: a virtuous person is favoured by God, or, a virtuous person is favoured by the Leader. In either case, authority plays a big part here.

But in modern society this is unlikely. The ideas of criticism are widespread in modern society and yet we see blind acceptance. These blindly accepted ideas fall roughly into two categories:
Some ideas are sacred, depending on political or cultural contexts. Some are explicitly sacred and it becomes taboo to criticise them - for example, religious beliefs, or strong political ideas. Some are implicitly sacred. Ideas like global warming, ecological breakdown are currently sacred ideas that are rarely criticised for fear of being socially and politically estranged.

The other category are the ideas that use science as an authority. If such and such publication or this or that scientist or writer says so, it must be true. Now naturally in our non-static society (a society that aims to criticise and make progress) if a person of authority says, ‘This is true because I say so,’ it’s not going to go down well. So these days these self-proclaimed Torchbearers of Truth will say, ‘This study says that so and so is bad for so and so.’ Then instead of criticising what this person is saying or what the study says we defer to his or her authority on the matter. The term ‘study’ has now given this already revered person a cloak of invincibility because if there’s a ‘study’ it has the justification of ‘science’. ‘This is what the science says, dummy!’

But this is not how science works. There is no justified truth in science. Every theory, every conclusion of every study is open to criticism. In fact it must be criticised - because that’s how science progresses and knowledge grows.
Using science as an authority, is using it to prevent further criticism and is not science. It is scientism.

Which brings me to the topic of this essay: screens and whether they are bad for kids.
Saying, ‘Some study conducted 30 years back that showed decreased attention spans in children who watched 3 hours of television as opposed to no television shows us that screens are bad for kids’ is not a scientific claim.

Why? Let’s break it down:

• Assuming the study was conducted ethically and competently, what it shows is: some children who watched TV for 3 hours a day for a few month had lower attention spans than the children who watched 0 hours of TV, over the same period of time.

• To make any claim based on this study is a theory proposed to explain the results of that study.

• In order to be a scientific theory or explanation it has to be a ‘good explanation’, which means, it cannot be easily varied and still account for the results of the study.

• But the theory ‘screens are bad for children’ is a bad explanation of the study because one could easily say, ‘all the children in a sitting position while watching TV so I think sitting is bad for children’ and this will still account for the results of the study.

• So what conclusion or theory can we draw from this study? None. There are too many variables involved. Especially the universal variable ‘the human mind’. The human mind can create knowledge and so the results of the study are subject to what the children were thinking at that time. Maybe after watching 3 hours of TV a day they found school boring (which I’m guessing is how they concluded that their attention spans were lower)!

Unless the study involved every child to have ever lived and will ever live and defined the term bad to include specific ‘bad’ things that happened or will happen to every child, a study cannot possibly make a claim as large and definitive as ‘screens are bad for kids’. And obviously, the people who did the study don’t say that: people who already think screens are bad for kids either genuinely or to sell their books (and videos!) use this study to support their claims. This is by the way how knowledge grows: you make a conjecture first and then criticise it to improve it. Unfortunately the latter part of the growth of knowledge seems to be missing in this case.
To ‘extrapolate’ a claim such as this from a study is an interpretation of the study: it is a theory that people have come up with to explain the results of that study. And it is a bad theory.

So is the only way to know whether screens are good or bad for kids to study every kids reaction to a screen? No. Luckily we don’t have to go to these lengths. We can make scientific claims by making ‘good explanations’ of why we think something is true.
A ‘good explanation’ is like ‘good design’: it is not easily variable. Even a tiny change in any of the details will bring the whole thing down. For example: An explanation such as ‘God makes thunder’ is a bad explanation. You can say ‘Zues makes thunder’ or ‘The Flying Teapot makes thunder’. The problem of what thunder is is not addressed by saying Zues or God. On the other hand if you look at a good explanation of what thunder is: “Thunder is created when lightning passes through the air. The lightning discharge heats the air rapidly and causes it to expand. Immediately after the [lightning] flash, the air cools and contracts quickly. This rapid expansion and contraction creates the sound wave that we hear as thunder.” ¹
It is very difficult to change any part of this explanation and still explain what thunder is.
If there is a good, hard-to-vary explanation of why screens affect children negatively I am yet to hear it.

But it’s easier than that to debunk these anti-screeners. Unless they are claiming that the very stuff that screens are made of - pixels - are bad for children, they have to make distinctions between what is on the screen. So saying ‘screens are bad’ is akin to saying, ‘there is no content on earth nor will there ever be content every created that when shown on a screen can affect a child positively.’ This is vile, Luddite prophecy nothing more, nothing less.

This seems quite obvious. So why aren’t anti-screeners more specific? Because the more specific you are the easier it is to debunk your claim. For example:

‘Screens rot the brains of children.’

‘What do you mean by rot?’

‘They become stupider.’

‘If you think it makes them stupid can you define intelligence?’

‘IQ tests’

‘Is IQ innate? Are there high IQ people and low IQ people?’

‘Yes’

‘So nobody can get smarter but screens make you stupider?’

'Ok screens decrease attention spans.’

‘Maybe school is boring.’

‘Fine, screens are unnatural’

‘So kids should painting on the walls of caves with animal blood for entertainment’

The onus is on them to explain why screens are bad. And yet since this ‘truth’ has been accepted by the ‘experts’ we find ourselves wasting time on what should be a non-issue. Because at the end of the day, a screen is a medium, like a book or like puppet-shows. It just happens to be much more interesting to kids than either of these because of the sheer variety of visual content. A book is a visually static object - a screen is a window into visual infinity. Is it any surprise that kids like them more than books? As a child grows if everything else goes well they will increase their range of interests. Books will begin to appeal to them when stories and ideas stimulate their minds as much as visuals. Or maybe they won’t. In that case the child is getting all they need from their screen and that’s ok.

1. shorturl.at/dkyR2