Is Contemporary Media Slowing The Minds Of Young Viewers

For a few decades we have paid lip service to the idea that our mass culture is following a path of decline to the lowest of standards.  This is assumed that because the dumb masses want easy pleasure, that the large media companies are delivering what the public want.  But just as an episode of “24″ suggests, precisely the opposite thing is happening.  Shows like The Sopranos can be watched with online tv access.  Our culture is getting more demanding, cognitively, not less.  For a viewer to make any sense of a given episode of “24″ they would have to pull together a considerably more information than would have been the case just a few decades previously.  Underneath the obvious ethnic stereotypes and violence, another trend is appearing.  To be able to keep up with shows like “24″ you will have to pay attention, make many inferences, and track many shifting social relationships.  This is the factor I call the Sleeping  Curve.  We are instinctively drawn to media that increasingly challenge our ability to pull together many diverse elements from our culture to help us make sense of any new presentations.  It actually turns out that juvenile sitcoms, violent television dramas and video games actually after all turn out to be very mentally nutritional. Online TV access is again allowing for greater distribution of all cultures.

It is my belief that this Sleeping Curve has the most impact on the youth of today, and by in large it is a force for the better.  That is because it is developing their ability to bring many bits of information found in normal cultural activities together to add additional meaning to any given situation.  You will seldom ever hear about this story in the larger media.  Instead we hear about how violence and stereotyping are reducing our entertainment to the lowest common denominator.

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