Children believe that what they see on the screen has actually happened — to them?
I’m all for keeping eight-year-olds from seeing porn online. I am the father of an almost-eight-year-old and I don’t want him seeing porn online or anywhere else, because he’s eight. But “‘Epidemic’ growth of Net porn” in the Washington Times is a ludicrous article. At least this part is:
“When a child sees this image of adult pornography, the mirror neurons that are in their brain will convince them that they are actually experiencing what they are seeing,” she said.
Children are very vulnerable as compared to adults because of the presence of mirror neurons in the brain, Dr. Cooper said. Mirror neurons are part of the brain that convince us that when we see something we are actually experiencing it.
So, children have ”mirror neurons” that convince us that when we see something we are actually experiencing it… um, okay. My son has seen Gremlins but did not at any time believe he had really fought them on a snowy winter’s night. He’s seen the Star Wars trilogy (the original one, not that later crap), but never once believed that he was Darth Vader’s son (even though I tried to talk like James Earl Jones). He’s watched many episodes of the delightful Phineas and Ferb, but not once has he claimed to be a platypus secret agent tasked with thwarting the evil plans of Dr. Doofenshmirtz. He spent the last year completely absorbed by Harry Potter books and movies, yet knows that he is a muggle.
I could list video games — he’s been Indiana Jones and Batman and yet never confused reality with fantasy. He’s seen superhero cartoons and movies and even has worn a cape on occasion when pretending to be a superhero on Halloween or while playing with friends, and yet has managed to never believe that he could really fly and has never jumped out of a window. Most parents could spend hours trying to remember all the shows and video games their children have seen and played and all the fantasy characters they have encountered. From what I gather, my son watches less TV and spends less time playing video games than most kids, but still the list is long. I haven’t mentioned Disney movies and plenty of other stuff.
Where are these mirror neurons? If children have them and can’t separate what they see from what actually happened to them, as the article says, then we ought to have a nation full of kids today who believe — who really believe — they have been bitten by a radioactive spider, helped blue aliens fight humans on a distant planet, and own a suit of armor that lets them fly and fight bad guys. When I was a kid, millions of us watched cartoons that included a talking dog and his friends solving mysteries and Super Friends (with Wonder Twins). Kids read comic books. Kids played with toy guns. Lots of them, just a couple of years later, played Dungeons and Dragons. Television shows and video games have only gotten more violent and graphic since then.
Many children — not mine — also see more adult-oriented shows, with realistic-seeming human drama and violence. If children had as much trouble separating reality from fantasy as psychologists have been telling us for decades, and considering how much TV kids watch and how many hours they spend playing video games, most kids should believe that they have committed dozens or hundreds of acts of violence or had many acts of violence committed against them, that what happened on television really happened to them. Is Dr. Cooper saying that in fact most kids really believe this? What study supports this absurd position?
If children have mirror neurons “that convince us that when we see something we are actually experiencing it,” we would expect not just the rare case of a kid jumping out of a window, thinking he can fly. No, we would expect dozens of kids to be jumping out of windows every day, because they are convinced that they actually did fly, just the day before when they watched a Superman cartoon. The sidewalks should be littered with children who recently jumped out of windows. We should have to step over the bodies to get to the bus stop.
Enough with this nonsense. Hey, Dr. Cooper and psychologists everywhere, you don’t need to say ridiculous things like children believe that what they see on television or a computer screen has actually happened to them in order to persuade people that 8-year-olds should not be viewing porn. Most parents already agree that their children should not be looking at porn. When you say stupid things and try to dress it up with science by referring to “mirror neurons,” you make your cause seem like a joke.
And stop it with making everything into an “epidemic.” If it isn’t a highly contagious illness that is spread by germs that are infecting many, many people — literally — then it isn’t an epidemic. Just because something is prevalent or a growing trend doesn’t mean it is an epidemic. It doesn’t even mean — by itself — that it’s bad. “Epidemic” and similar words are used to create a sense of urgency, panic even, among the public, and the people using language this way do so usually because they want to use the fear their words cause to gain support for some law or regulation they want to impose. If a law or regulation is justified, then justify it. No more of this silliness of “mirror neurons” and “epidemics.” Make your argument, Dr. Cooper. Explain it without exaggeration. Maintain some credibility if you can. Don’t tell us that children in general believe that what they see on a video screen actually happened to them. It’s clearly false. Saying it makes you seem either stupid or dishonest.
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But every time we see the Dreamworks logo Owen tells me that the boy is him, and that he was born on the moon & will take me there when he is grown up & can go back in his spaceship. I think that totally proves the doctor’s point, no? Or maybe it’s just funny. Either way, no porn for us either!
LOL. “Mirror neurons” reminds me of “brain cloud” from the movie “Joe vs. the Volcano.”
Van, the next day, when someone asks Owen what he did yesterday, if he remembers at all (little kids often need to be reminded), does he say, “We saw a movie” or “We saw Toy Story 3,” or does he say, “I was on the moon fishing.”? I imagine he does not usually say the latter. While he might be engaging with the fantasy of being the boy sitting on the moon, that is not the same as believing that what he saw on screen in fact happened to him.
A colleague/friend (I could reverse that) wrote to me the following:
“But I thought studies have shown that kids do personalize what they view/read. Your examples [...] are funny, but really kids do think they are Iron Man when they play. As adults, we seem to lose that mostly. I have read about kids who have read about/seen something involving a dying parent, and then it hits them: My mommy might die. They start acting clingy and worried or even more pathological. Anyway, I think kids do this in many innocuous ways — thinking they are a superhero or athlete — so it wouldn’t surprise me that a particularly disturbing image might make them think about themselves as victims or even project themselves as the victim.”
My response:
Partly we might be interpreting the claim differently — the claim I am disputing didn’t seem to me to mean that in rare instances, a child could confuse reality with a movie, or a traumatic dramatic scene might affect children emotionally, some children especially, in powerful ways differently than it affects adults. I accept the latter as a given and even grant the possibility that sometimes — very rarely, I believe — a young kid can confuse reality with what they see on screen or in life.
Cooper’s claim seems to be far more general than that, more certain, covering kids overall rather than rare instances and the very young. And that’s where I strongly disagree and where I point to the overwhelming experiential evidence we all have in our own lives, from our own childhoods and our own children.
While we may remember being frightened from a movie and while we may remember being lost in pretend play, in a way that kids can be that adults cannot, overwhelmingly I believe that most of us have never truly believed that what we saw on screen in reality happened to us. As we were all children, and most have our own children, if this were anything other than extremely rare, many of us would have our own memories of and experiences with it. I don’t think most of us do.
Kids don’t think they really are Iron Man when they play superheroes. They pretend to be Iron Man. Their pretend may be more intense than an adult’s, they may give it up reluctantly when it’s dinner time, it might be vivid for them, but I don’t think that most kids genuinely believed that they were flying the day before.
Are we talking about two-year-olds? Or six-year-olds? If a six-year-old watches Spider-Man and then thinks that the events in the movie happened to him — really happened to him, for real — I believe that might be cause for alarm, or at least that it isn’t normal, and none of the dozens of children I know seem to have had anything close to that response to the hundreds of shows and movies they watch. Fortunately, I think it is exceptionally rare.
For me, studies don’t trump the experiences of millions of people, particularly when we are dealing with fuzzy areas like psychology and when claims are hyperbolic. Do we also believe that kids, in the days before online porn or even today, who accidentally walk in on their parents having sex, also believe that what they saw happened to them? Or only when it happens on a screen? Are kids really walking around deluded most of the time, thinking that whatever they see happened to them, not knowing what is their life and what is a movie?
My examples, which you say amused but did not persuade you, do raise that issue — kids watch so many shows on TV and yet seem to not believe those things happened to them. All of those instances — billions of them — must count for something. While kids do understand reality differently from adults, and very often mix up the facts and can adamantly insist something happened that we know did not happen, or happen that way, this is not the same as their genuinely believing that they were left home alone for Christmas after they watch Home Alone. My son watched Home Alone. He didn’t confuse reality with the movie, and most kids don’t.
Children also hear about earthquakes and other items in the news, and while these things can be distressing to a child, cause them to be afraid, cling to their parents, etc., that is not the same thing as their believing that they were in the earthquake. In your example, the child would have to believe that his mother died, is no longer alive, for Cooper’s claim to hold. Just clinging to mom and being afraid because of a movie doesn’t fit what she has claimed.
With all that said, it could be that the exceptional cases may, when confronted with a dramatic scene of violence or intensity, personalize things, and if Cooper had modifed her statement to not say that children believe that what they see on screen actually happened to them, but that some children who see especially traumatic things are emotionally affected in serious ways and some even believe it happened, even in some cases to them — and supported that assertion — I probably wouldn’t have had a post to write in the first place. But that is not what she claimed.
Overall, I think we sometimes underestimate how resilient children are.
When I am at a nice ripe old age, maybe…just maybe they can isolate these “mirror neurons” and through a miracle of stem cell research shoot some in my sodden old feeble brain. They can then prop me up in a bed and show me the life style I should have led, wine, women and song. Make me a mafia don and then a superhero who gets all the women. A billionaire with yachts and starletts on speed dial would be nice…… What a way to go. With my luck they will loop a tape of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and have a good laugh.