Addiction unplugged – the TV and computer as babysitter.
Thoroughly addicted to videos, one autistic child after another will go without eating, sleeping, washing, dressing, schooling, even the toilet to reply, just one more millionth time their favorite Disney, Thomas The Tank or Bob The Builder video. Like addicts
some of the worst affected will self injure, rage against their teachers in the special ed class and parents at home, to fixate frame by frame on their primed emotional triggers, escalating themselves into states of euphoria, agitation or glued even with anxiety to the idiot box as the years tick by and the carers give in and development is lost. Some of these kids who by ten may be unable to speak in sentences, brush their teeth or tie their shoes can operate a DVD player, video game and computer with ease, know exactly what order their precious drugs are stored in, and be masters in exactly how to emotionally manage their relatively redundant secondary human family in order to ensure their supply, through their teens, twenties, fourties, fifties.
This is not all people with autism but it is the new breed in our consumer age in which we are pursued by repetitive advertising, encouraged to form addictions to people on voyeuristic so called ‘reality TV’ programs and strive to be physicially one size fits all at any cost whilst buying Coke and Mac Donalds as Big Brother prescribed for us in his infinite wisdom.
But twenty years from now, we may well find DVD players come with warning labels; “Repetitive playing of formulaic programs designed to trigger particular patterns of extreme emotion may lead to chemical addiction”.
Could it be? Could it be that with the idiot box as baby sitter, and co-dependency passing as love and passivity passing as education that we could really so desperately enjoy the belonging of our favorite DVD a million times over that we’d become hooked on the chemical highs of the emotions it triggered so systematically, with such perfect delivery each guaranteed time?
It has long been known that behaviours can produce particular chemical highs. Risk taking,watching sports and fights, rescue programs, the news, horrors, thrillers, and now slasher films are designed to give us regular fixes of adrenaline. Comedies are designer drugs for those into endorphins from laughter (but generally fail to deliver). Soaps, and formulaic children’s programs lull us just like a sedative. Pick your drug, the more guaranteed the delivery the better so predictable if you please… hey get it on DVD and WATCH IT AS MANY TIMES AS YOU ‘LIKE’…. and start them young.
Those with autism are the canaries in the mines. What primes addiction in those with autism today, is perhaps the reality of the majority tomorrow. After all, how removed is the autistic DVD addict and his or her ‘junkie’ couch potato or computer game teenager? Such choice! Such choice? You tell me what parent ever unplugged the drug dealer and gave it a three month holiday so the household could find boredom long enough to discover mind, self, creativity and perhaps even a need for communication, for relationship?
Autism in the 1960s was almost unheard of. Statistics in the 1980s said 1 in 10,000. Today is it 1 in 160 people.
What is the mind, identity, development, neurology of an adult who has spent 20 years as an addict to an invisible, behaviourally induced drug?
Would it seem a whole new ‘culture’?
People who can fixate to the exclusion of all else, at any cost?
We meet their every need, how could they develop a developmental disability.
The answer may be staring some people right in the face.
Sit back, relax, settle in. Trigger fingers ready. The remote, ironically, is always so so very close.
… Donna Williams *)
author, artist, screenwriter, surrealist.
Hi Donna.
Thank goodness I have grown out of that opiate. My reasons are more qualitative, and any programming I opt for are documentaries relevant to my interests, news, or the music channels.
Computing and listening to music tends to take first preference over watching Coronation Street, Eastenders or the X Factor. With the former pastime, it is hard for me to leave the computer without parental reminders. This is not down to computer games (I hate having to book a day off work to read the manual), but anything of a creative nature (writing, using desk-top-publishing software and open source programs) or coding in HTML.
Your posting reminded me of the lyrics of ‘Child of Vision’, the final track on Supertramp’s ‘Breakfast in America’:
“You gave me Coca Cola/You said it tasted good/Then you watch the television/It says that you should do…” – Roger Hodgson.
One thing which used to do my head in when I wasn’t working was daytime television. I couldn’t understand the entertainment value in hearing some bawling persons, headlined under sensationalist titles like “My mother has three lovers.” This gave me greater incentive to look for work or ride around on buses.
Stuart.
“The Travelling Poet” and public transport enthusiast.
that’s just such a classic quote from you Stuart… that last part.
you’re a people watcher (what poet isn’t) and the movie is ‘out there’.
🙂 Donna *)
Hi Donna
Images of the pages of Huxley’s Brave New World came to mind upon reading your post.
Perhaps, in some way, this society is becoming totally malleable and preconditioned to expect and accept a similar fate. Our electronic devices could be seen as used in lieu of Huxley’s Soma – the panacea given to all at the slightest indication of discontentment.
But in a child’s case, is it really the child who discovers this stimulant which supercedes all and demands a continuance of same? Or is it the caregiver who welcomes the respite from the childs demands and thus enables a continuance of the conditioned reflex?
As a parent myself, I am not blaming parents for this but rather society as a whole. In my son’s classroom, during lunch hour, a movie was quite often shown to facilitate quiet until it was time to go outside. Quiet was indeed enabled but many, including my son, also ‘forgot’ to eat their lunch while their minds were distracted from the necessities of life.
A pattern developed – when one is hungry, one should watch a movie to quiet one’s cravings. It took time to pinpoint what the problem was; a pattern which he tried to repeat at home when it was time to eat.
It takes a very long time to undo these conditioned reflexes. In the above instance, the food and mealtime had to have more appeal than the television. Food colours had to be as vibrant and enticing as a flashing screen while conversation had to provoke interest yet continually halted to allow the food to be eaten.
It takes less time to advocate that quiet and movies should wait while eating lunch is encouraged. It takes less time to teach limitations to begin with.
I agree there is a possible correlation between the increase of the use of electronic devices with the increase in autism. But I wonder if a contributing factor could also be the almost prevailing willingness on the adult’s part to promote such devices (and drugs such as Ritalin) to ensure the illusion of sameness….a nice, new, calm world.
I prefer differences. I’d rather encourage moderation of the use of these Soma-types than maintain the status quo of the illusion of contentment.
The devices are here to stay; the challenge is how to teach the adults to encourage proper use of them so at the very least, the stats will level off and not increase further.
JB
*one should never try to make sense in the middle of the night. 🙂
Wow, awesome response JB.
yes, its amazing what one discovers when one dares to think wholistically…
🙂 Donna *)
I can watch a whole lot of TV (by my standards) on certain days. But that stuff is the weather channel and news and discovery health channel medical shows. so there is interesting educational information to be found on the idiot box. It is thus called, because of what many people choose to watch.
JB- rock on. Variety is the spice of life. Who wants vanilla when one can have rocky road or mint.
cheers
ai
hmmm yes, don’t forget to exercise your musical mind too… musical thinking is more than music but music trains it. One can see the world musically too… movement, actions, traffic, all like a symphony playing visually. Its a world of rhythm, pattern, feel.
So TV programs are like a diet, one needs a varied diet to be spiritually, cognitively healthy and that includes ACTIVITY, being kinesthetic, being in the body, through DOING.
So whatever the flavour, a balanced diet is a good thing whether in food or activity and all addicts resist all by that which they’re used to or addicted to.
🙂 Donna Williams *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net
How amazing, I have always wondered the way Jade stares at her Baby Einstein videos. She always did. And myself, with 4 major surgeries in 8 months while she was a young toddler, I didn’t mind the respite the DVDs gave me. Soon we noticed that she tuned out the outside world, but she always loves the movies. My husband and I often refer to the movies as autistic crack. We have even joked about the release of the 1st Baby Einstein coinciding with the increase. We now limit Jade’s TV, and shut off cable when we found our 10 yr old watching MTV. We now have an antannae, we can watch Nova on PBS, the local news, and it suits us just fine. I think parents need to try to interefere with their children more.
great story Monica.
gutsy admission too about how its so easy to let the TV become babysitter.
years ago, asbestos was ‘safe’, so was Thalidomide, and one couldn’t do too much exercise (tell that to an anorexic), and too much hard work couldn’t kill you (tell that to a workaholic who destroys their health, relationship and life), and caffeine was harmless (there are people who become violent in caffeine withdrawal because of addiction).
The human race believes what it wants to and we take opinion and advertising as ‘caring’ and ‘science’ when its just someone’s vested interest.
We pray when we reap the consequences of imbalance and excess and comiserate when we have to make choices that will lead to re-balance.
Those in the mental hospitals aren’t nearly so nuts as the majority of ‘normal’ people who promote, defend and maintain the most unhealthy imbalances in the status quo.
They say they look for God, but their loyalty is so often to imbalance that surely this, itself, is their real God.
Still, you inspire me the whole world isn’t nuts even if the social majority possibly is.
… Donna *)