television- control of the mind through vision
Quantum Mechanics?
Someone said two of my favorate phrases
Anyhow, I'll combat the "TV = Mind Control" portion of this (but i do love quantum mechanics!)
You have this two fold, i'll start with the kiddies first. I'm pretty sure i dont need to cover the mental state or capacity of children, if i do
need to please feel free to ask! Now for the nuts and bolts!
Children/kids/kidlets whatever you wish to call them, are indeed (as we have all read) like sponges, i'm pretty sure most will not argue this point
(keep in mind Childrens minds are not my forte). When it comes to developing their personal and mental facalties the jury is still out (Environmental
vs Genetics, I'm with the environmental crowd), however it is all agreed that personality starts almost immediately after birth, once the child has
well 'figured out' who its parents are. Post that you then start build major personality traits. Now its not until the child has (Keep in mind
this is still theory here, and not fact) reached the age of ~3-4 that the full traits have been adpoted.
NOW, with the above in mind, the OP has it half right. The number of parents who use the TV as a baby sitter still astounds me, now its theoritecally
possible the child develops their personality traits from the TV characters on the screen (and their associated interactions). This does not mean if
you make your kid(s) watch Macguyver they will all be able to turn a paper clip into a microwave using just toilet paper, they will just pickup
certain (if not all) taits from the characters from the show. However the 'down side' of it is they (in theory) lack start to empathy, because the
child (itself) has not interactions with the TV specifically, thus you COULD in theory develop an individual to adulthood using a TV and specific show
sets to produce a 'robot' provided you took the person from an infant.
Adults/Young Adults (Mentally) - These are a different kettle of fish, to turn a robot is quite the feat using just TV, each individual adult will
react to stimulus differently, so what you might react too will be different from me, and there is specifically SOME people who just dont react, the
best case for this is advets, i for one (when i do watch TV) generally dont watch the ads, i take the time to do something around the house or will
flick back to something i was working on, thus negating all the paid adverts, or my wife will come over and chat to me (thus diverting my attention).
All "healthy" households will have that effect, the interruptions would break any 'conditioning' being transmitted via the TV (Provided you got
one that appeals to you of course), even that dogs barking, people driving past etc will cause this to 'break' the immersion.
TL;DR Version: TV's cant create robot humans, i could debate that it lowers peoples IQ's depending on the shows watched, but i suspect that would be
more personal opinion rather than medical fact.