Electronic media: rotting our brains or making us smarter?

December 10, 2016

It’s a typical Saturday evening at the Wheatley household. With her tail wagging and mouth watering, our 11-year-old Shih Tzu, Maggie, paces frantically around Mom as she prepares dinner in the kitchen. The smell of buttered potatoes and Maggie’s incessant barking greet you as you walk through the front door. To your left is a set of carpeted stairs that lead to our playroom, where you will find my 14-year-old brother, Easton, in his natural habitat.

Gunshots and rapid button pressing grow louder as you enter the playroom. Saying goodbye to one of his online friends, Easton removes his headset, turns off his Xbox and inserts “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker” into his Wii U. To you, it may seem that he is merely pressing a few buttons and staring mindlessly at a screen. What you cannot see, however, are the cognitive gears turning in his head as he solves virtual puzzles with difficulties rivaling that of word problems in math.

Heading back down the stairs and into the living room, you find my dad reclining on the couch while watching an episode of “Seinfeld.” He laughs heartily at a remark made by George – one of the show’s characters. However, the humor and the wit behind it fall flat for you because the remark is a punch line for a joke that was set up five seasons prior.

Finally, in the dining room, you notice me lurking underneath our computer, troubleshooting an issue with our router so I can blog about the latest movie I’ve seen. This challenge, while frustrating, is actually intellectually stimulating. My eventual blog post will also serve as a valuable form of social interaction.

Compare this scene to what it would have looked like 100 years ago. Instead of using critical thinking skills to restore our network connection, I would be returning home with Dad from a hard day’s work on the farm. Rather than embarking on imaginative quests as the hero, Link, Easton would finish playing Kick the Can with his friends as Mom called him inside for dinner.

The Sleeper Curve

As illustrated above, our hobbies have grown increasingly sophisticated over the last century. With the innovations of film, television, video games and the Internet, we are able to escape into fantastic worlds at the touch of a button, connect with friends from across the globe and mentally project ourselves into the lives of the Kardashians as we attempt to keep up with them.

But oddly enough, growing up, we were told that TV rots our brains and that we should read more. Instead of enjoying a “Harry Potter” marathon on ABC Family, we need to go outside and play. And clearly the only productive use of a video game is to improve hand-eye coordination…right?

In his 2005 book “Everything Bad is Good For You,” Steven Johnson proposes a different theory that he calls “The Sleeper Curve,” which states that, “the most debated forms of mass diversion — video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms — turn out to be nutritional after all” (Johnson).

For a moment, let’s disregard your parents’ advice to consider this radical idea.

Probing and Telescoping

When Easton plays “The Wind Waker” — a game characterized by solving puzzles — and when I play “Skyrim” — an interactive adventure with a massive world to explore — the blank stares we present to our TV screens are indicative not of numbness, but concentration.

To quote Johnson, “Games are fiendishly, sometimes maddeningly, hard.” Whether it be the sheer thrill of slaying a dragon to save the fictional town of Whiterun, or completing a series of tasks to claim a treasure chest, ultimately the games’ reward systems, not their content, are what keep us coming back (Johnson).

The type of thinking that goes into playing games such as this, according to Johnson, can be classified into two categories: “probing” and “telescoping.” Think of probing as the “scientific method” of gaming, a process of trial and error. You explore a game’s environment, search for clues and develop a hypothesis about how to solve a task or what a certain object does. You experiment by clicking on that object or attempting to accomplish that task. Conclusions are reached and you retain that knowledge moving forward. Rinse and repeat (Johnson).

Telescoping refers to the way that objectives in a puzzle-based game such as “The Wind Waker” fit inside one another like a collapsed telescope. It involves visualizing a set of tasks in a certain hierarchy and completing them in the correct order.

If you were to read through a guide to completing a “Zelda” game, you would notice that this process can be quite tedious:

“With the letter to the Prince, you must now befriend the Prince. To do this, you need to get to the top of Dragon Roost Mt. To do this, you must get to the other side of the gorge. To do this, you must fill up the gorge with water so you can swim across it…” (Johnson)

And the list goes on and on.

While the cognitive benefits of gaming are different from reading, they can be equally beneficial.

“Learning algebra isn’t about acquiring a specific tool; it’s about building up a mental muscle that will come in handy elsewhere,” Johnson said. “So it is with games. It’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re playing a game, it’s the way you’re thinking that matters.”

Narrative Complexity in Film

It is evident that with the passage of time, film has made considerable visual and technological strides as an art form. It has also become smarter.

Let’s compare and contrast the plots of three Disney hits: “Bambi” (1942), “Mary Poppins” (1964) and “Finding Nemo” (2002). Each film has a family unit and a sidekick or two to compliment them. Aside from this similarity, however, beginning with “Bambi,” the films’ plots gradually increase in complexity (Johnson).

“Bambi” almost exclusively centers on Flower, Thumper and Bambi himself, while “Mary Poppins” throws five additional characters into the mix, including the likes of Bert the chimney sweep and the bank president. Fast-forward to 2002 and the film’s target audience of children is expected to keep track of 20 characters, each with distinct personalities (Johnson).

Big-budget films such as “Pulp Fiction” (1994), “Big Fish” (2003) and “Inception” (2010) tax our minds by introducing several interweaving narrative threads, deliberately withholding critical plot details or reversing the traditional roles of cause and effect. Amidst today’s formulaic action blockbusters and simplistic comedies, these films also perform incredibly well at the box office, a testament to Johnson’s theory that our brains enjoy a good challenge (Johnson).

“Seinfeld,” “SpongeBob” and the Reality of Reality TV

As with video games, with television it’s not what you’re watching, but the way you’re thinking while watching that matters. We’ve already touched on the benefits of “multiple threading” — the inclusion of several intersecting plot lines — within film, and this storytelling approach can be found in numerous modern shows such as “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons” (Johnson).

Where these two shows truly shine, however, is in their lack of “flashing arrows” — clues provided by the show’s creators to help viewers understand the story. In the case of “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons,” the writers refuse to provide these arrows in the shows’ dialogue and character interactions. To understand the humor; you’ll have to start from episode one (Johnson).

An example of this can be found in a “Seinfeld” episode titled “The Betrayal,” which tells its story in reverse chronological order. Because of this, the punch lines arrive before the jokes, requiring a second or even third viewing of the episode for the laughs to really kick in. The more you watch the episode, the funnier it becomes, with hidden subtleties being found on the fourth, fifth and even sixth viewing (Johnson).

This technique has been applied in shows ranging from mature dramas such as “The Sopranos” to Nickelodeon’s “Blues Clues,” but a childhood favorite of mine, “SpongeBob Squarepants,” makes use of it a unique way.

Growing up, I would occasionally hear a slight chuckle from my dad as he passed in and out of the living room while I watched “SpongeBob.” What puzzled me was that he would often laugh at a single line uttered by Mr. Krabs or Squidward, while I would only find funny the more outrageous shenanigans of SpongeBob and Patrick. Only upon a second viewing of the first three seasons in college did I realize that the show contains a shocking amount of witty banter and mature humor. The same kids who grew up loving the sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea can also appreciate him as adults.

What about reality TV? Surely an episode of “Fear Factor” or “Big Brother” cannot be beneficial. According to Johnson, this is the “ultimate test of the Sleeper Curve theory: even the crap has improved” (Johnson).

Reality shows, such as “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” take cues from the gaming world in that they contain a series of competitive trials that increase in difficulty over the course of a season. As the contestants learn the rules of the game, so do you. You imagine yourself as one of the participants and create a strategy of your own. Shows such as this also offer you the opportunity to track subtle changes in the gestures, expressions and vocal inflections of various contestants. You learn who can be trusted and who can’t, who to fire and who to boot off the island, and, in doing so, build social dexterity and emotional intelligence (Johnson).

Troubleshooting, Social Networking and the Online Diary

The participatory nature of reality TV is ever present in the online world. From sending emails to uploading that next hit post to your fashion blog, Internet activity, in the words of Steve Jobs, is a “sit-forward” type of media (Johnson).

A 2004 study by the Pew Charitable Trust found that more than eight million Americans claim to have a personal blog (a number that has undoubtedly grown), with the content of these blogs being not journalistic, but personal in nature (Johnson).

While online activity such as this can occasionally result in unhealthy behavior and situations, for the majority of content creators, blogging offers a chance to project their identities onto a screen through personal anecdotes, advice about various topics or written critiques of products and entertainment. And, as Johnson points out, there are worse ways they could be spending their time: “Better to have minds actively composing the soap opera of their own lives than zoning out in front of someone else’s” (Johnson).

Troubleshooting a network connection, exploring the features of a new iPhone app or learning the ins and outs of new computer software are also beneficial forms of cognitive engagement, and there’s a level of fun that comes with probing online interfaces and features without assistance (Johnson).

Above all, the Internet has opened the door to a wide variety of social interactions. Whether we’re “tweeting” about the Razorback game, updating our Snapchat stories or “Skyping” with a friend halfway across the globe, we are making full use of our ability to connect.

“Social networking applications have done something that the visionaries never imagined: they are augmenting our people skills…widening our social circles and creating new possibilities for strangers to share ideas and experiences,” Johnson said.

A New Perspective

To be clear, I am not encouraging you to play video games for eight hours every day, nor do I advocate replacing reading, writing and arithmetic with Netflix, Instagram and Disney magic. What I am suggesting, however, is that we abandon the common notion that electronic media, as a whole, has no intellectual value.

Moderation is key. Read novels and keep up with current events, strive for academic excellence in college and stay physically active. But also enjoy a Christopher Nolan film from time to time. Don’t be afraid to pick up your Xbox controller over the weekend. And if you need a study break, binge watch a few episodes of “The Office.” You’ll be better off for it.

By Evan Wheatley, features editor

Works Cited:

Johnson, Steven. “Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Pop Culture is Actually Making Us
Smarter.” Riverhead Books, 2005.

3 Comments

  1. Seems relatively apparent that you’d still be a pretty bright dude even in the absence of electronic media there, EW. Jus’ sayin’. ;]

  2. I’m a member of “Kick the Can Era”…..we had little money , no TV, just our
    youthful energy to keep us moving. These comments have made things much
    clearer to me. We are all members of the evolutionary process …….?

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