The harmful effects of television on America's children is far greater than most people imagine, but the way to correct it is not by censorship, says a national leader in the campaign.
"We have to figure out other ways to do it," said David Walsh, president and founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family."If we end up in court battling First Amendment issues, nothing is going to change. And besides," he added, "I don't want to give up our Constitution; the First Amendment is too important."
A psychologist with the Fairview Health Systems in Minneapolis, Walsh is author of "Selling Out America's Children," a book on the impact of advertising and commercialism. For 10 years he has been writing and lecturing about television's impact on kids, and has worked with the American Medical Association and other groups trying to address the issues.
He said that while most of the attention is focused on the impact of television sex and violence, he thinks there's a bigger problem. Television has become the major storyteller to American children, and "whoever tells the story defines the culture," Walsh said. "The most harmful effect (of TV) is that it has created a culture of disrespect. It starts to redefine how it is that we're supposed to be treating each other."
The sharp increase in violence by children "is the end-point of disrespect," he added. "But violence is just one example. The influence extends to other areas."
He said a content-analysis of TV programs with sexual encounters found that in 94 percent of the sex scenes, the couples were not married. "The lesson to our children is, `Sex is life, it's fun, it's no big deal, and you do it with everybody.' "
"It (television) normalizes behavior. Kids think that's the way everybody acts."
Studies have also found a direct inverse correlation between low reading scores and the amount of time a child spends watching TV, he said.
But he said the solution would not be "to tell everyone to get rid of their television. It's not going to happen."
Walsh urges groups to become involved in making people aware of the problems and what they can do. "Part of the problem," he says, "is what we're not doing."