Statistics: Watching Ourselves Into A Stupor: The Lure Of The Screen...

"I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air... and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a great wasteland."

-Newton N. Minow, ( Speech - National Assn. of Broadcasters, Washington., DC, 5.9.1961).

PART I: SCREENS:

Adult Americans spend an average of more than eight hours a day in front of screens -- televisions, computer monitors, cellphones or other devices, according to a new study. The study also found that live television in the home continues to attract the greatest amount of viewing time with the average American spending slightly more than five hours a day in front of the tube.

The figure drops to 210 minutes a day of average TV viewing time among 18-24 year olds but rises to 420 minutes a day among those aged 65 and older.

The "Video Consumer Mapping" study was conducted by Ball State University's Center for Media Design (CMD) and Sequent Partners for the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence (CRE). For the year-long study, observers recorded the exposure of 350 subjects to four categories of screens: traditional television, computers, mobile devices and other screens such as store displays, movie screens and even GPS navigation units. The study found the average amount of screen time for all age groups was "strikingly similar" at more than eight-and-a-half hours although the type of devices and duration used by the respective groups throughout the day varied.

It found that people aged 45 to 54 averaged the most daily screen time at just over nine-and-a-half hours. The study did not include anyone under the age of 18.

Among other finds:

• Computer video consumption tends to be quite small with an average time of just over two minutes a day.

• Adults spend an average of 6.5 minutes a day with videogame consoles with the number rising to 26 minutes a day among those aged 18-24

• Adults spend an average 142 minutes a day in front of computer screens

• Adults spend an average 20 minutes a day engaged with mobile devices with the highest usage -- 43 minutes a day -- among the 18-24 age group

"What differentiates this study from all other attempts to measure video exposure at the consumer level is its scale, the range of media covered and the fact that it is focused on consumers first and the media second," said Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research for Ball State's CMD. "It’s not a study about TV or the Web or any other medium -- it’s about how, where, how often and for how long consumers are exposed to all media."

PART II: JUST TELEVISION STATISTICS:

1. Watching:

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube

• Percentage of households that possess at least one television: 99
• Number of TV sets in the average U.S. household: 2.24
• Percentage of U.S. homes with three or more TV sets: 66
• Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes
• Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66
• Number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans: 250 billion
• Value of that time assuming an average wage of S5/hour: S1.25 trillion
• Percentage of Americans who say they watch too much TV: 49

2. Children:

• Approximate number of studies examining TV's effects on children: 4,000
• Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 3.5
• Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680
• Percentage of day care centers that use TV during a typical day: 70
• Percentage of parents who would like to limit their children's TV watching: 73
• Percentage of 4-6 year-olds who, when asked to choose between watching TV and spending time with their fathers, preferred television: 54
• Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours
• Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500

3. Violence:

• Number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000
• Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
• Percentage of Americans who believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem: 79

4. Commercialism:

• Number of 30-second TV commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000
• Number of TV commercials seen by the average person by age 65: 2 million
• Percentage of survey participants (1993) who said that TV commercials
• aimed at children make them too materialistic: 92
• Rank of food products/fast-food restaurants among TV advertisements to kids: 1
• Total spending by 100 leading TV advertisers in 1993: $15 billion

5. General:

• Percentage of local TV news broadcast time devoted to advertising: 30
• Percentage devoted to stories about crime, disaster and war: 53.8
• Percentage devoted to public service announcements: 0.7
• Percentage of Americans who can name The Three Stooges: 59
• Percentage who can name at least three justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: 17

- (Part I: "Americans Spend Eight Hours a Day on Screens," Breitbart.com 3.27.2009, Part II: TV-Free America, 2008. Image: -SweetyViolence, Deviantart.com, 2008 ).

History Repeating: The 40-Year Cycle Of Change...Is Here...

Written in 2005:

"First, I want to take notice of D-Day, June 6, 1944, the battle which set the stage for the defeat of fascism in Europe. (Interestingly, the battle which turned the tide in the Pacific War occurred at roughly the same date, June 3 - 7, off Midway Island, in 1942. U.S. planes destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers and even more importantly, the cream of Japanese naval aviation. But that's another story).

As we consider a day 61 years ago, it calls to mind the broad sweep of history, and various cyclical patterns of history--those posited by Nicolai Kondratieff and Ralph Nelson Elliott. For starters, let's consider 1893, 1932 and 1974. Interestingly enough, those bottoms of financial panics or depressions seem to operate on about 40-year cycles. If there is indeed a pattern there, we should get a humdinger of a depression around 2012.

Kondratieff posited that an economic cycle of debt buildup and repudiation repeats every 50-60 years. Given the enormous borrowing binge the world has gleefully embarked on during the past five years (M-3 expansion of around $2 trillion by some estimates, American homeowners tapping their equity to the tune of $1.6 trillion in new debt, Federal budget deficits on the order of $400 billion annually, etc.), it's difficult to dismiss Kondratieff's fundamental insight as entirely wrongheaded.

Many in his camp believe we are entering the "winter" phase which will culminate in a collapse or repudiation of all that debt. It's something to consider, given one irrefutable fact: no economy runs up forever in a straight line of unending growth.

"The low-interest-rate-fueled growth in the U.S. economy, says Robert Brusca, president of Fact and Opinion Research, has played out principally through reckless spending from refinanced real estate. I'm convinced that people have taken this money and blown it on gewgaws and junk," he says. "We're basically borrowing money to support our consumption, and we are living well beyond our means."

These "long waves" seem to suggest a severe and long-lasting downturn in the world economy is close at hand, based on the fundamental insight that the enormous mountains of debt which have been accumulated must now be repudiated in order to set up the next cycle of growth.

There is another eerily repetitive pattern of change which has occurred on 40-year cycles in the past century: one of social tumult and change. Consider the explosion of artistic freedoms in film and music of the 1920s, and the concurrent lifting of social constraints, and then note the similarity to the 1960s (ending either with the disasterous Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in 1969, or Watergate in 1974,depending on your taste in history). If the 40-year pattern holds, we are in the midst of, or at least entering, a similar decade of social turmoil.

We could posit that the cycle began on Septemebr 11, 2001, ushering in a period not of artistic expression but of new constraints and paranoia. The rise of the religious right as a political force could be seen as the penumbra of the 1960s, just as the rise of a radically reactionary Islam could be seen as a reverse analog of the big-power Communist threat the U.S. faced in the 60s.

Where the 60s were all about questioning the conformity which had dominated social and political life in the 1950s, this decade seems to be about reining in the chaos, both outside the national borders and within. A new "ownership" ethic has replaced the paternalistic state ideal of the 1960s, and each new excess in the popular culture (hideously violent Playstation games, crudely misogynist hip-hop music is matched by a shrill new constraint (banning medical marijuana, stem cells, etc.).

Even more troubling, the divide between the wealthy elites and the middle class is widening; as the economy stumbles toward breakdown, the wealth of the nation has flowed to the top 5% of citizenry. As the average Schmoe relentlessly taps his home equity to support a lavishly foolish "upper-middle class lifestyle" filled with the spiritual rot of gimcrack distractions and useless toys, (Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2005, "Lagging Behind the Wealthy, Many Use Debt to Catch Up") the real wealth of the nation aggregates in the elites' hands. As tax rates for the wealthiest plummet to all-time lows, medical insurance becomes a luxury for everyone not independently wealthy or employed by a government agency.

The nation careens down the path of a fiscal policy of endless deficit, transferring whatever wealth remains in the hands on the young to the elderly via unsustainably expensive Medicare benefits, and yet the citizenry are strangely complacent, as if their internal compasses have been scrambled. The events of the decade ahead may provide a lodestone for the dazed American citizenry; as things fall apart, they may find their internal compasses re-set, and the distractions of consumerism less mesmerizing. Can it happen too soon? I think not.

-Charles Hugh Smith ("Are We Poised on the Precipice of Another Age of Turmoil?" 6.2005. Image: - Martin Luther King Jr.'s Mug Shot, thesmokinggun.com, 4.16.1963).

"King was arrested and jailed in Birmingham Alabama after a peaceful protest of segregation. It is here that King wrote "The Letter from Birmingham Jail." The open letter was a response to a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen entitled "A Call For Unity" which agreed that social injustices were taking place but believed that the battles should be taken solely to the court not to the streets in order to better the city of Birmingham. King responded that without forceful, direct actions such as his, true civil rights could never be achieved. As he put it, "This wait has almost always meant 'never.'" He held that Civil Disobedience is justified in the face of unjust laws."-NationMaster Encyclopedia, 2005).

The Imperial State: Pepper Spray, Rubber Bullets, Concussion Grenades & Excessive Force...Oh My!

"In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."

During Monday's demonstration, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. At least 284 people were arrested, including Amy Goodman, the prominent host of Democracy Now!, as well as the show's producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. "St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city to be," Greenwald wrote, "with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations."

Bruce Nestor said the timing of the arrests was intended to stop protest activity, "to make people fearful of the protests, but also to discourage people from protesting." Nevertheless, 10,000 people, many opposed to the Iraq war, turned out to demonstrate on Monday. A legal team from the National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently to protect the constitutional rights of protestors."

- Marjorie Cohn (President of the National Lawyers Guild and a Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Excerpt: "Preemptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC," commondreams.org, 9.2.08 Image: American Fascism poster, lilith-ezine.com, 2008).