Does Watching TV Make You Smarter - Book Report/Review Example

Does watching TV make you smarter?Dana Stevens’s essay “Does watching TV make you smarter? Duh…I dunno” is critical response to Steven Johnsons’ article in New York Magazine. Johnson’s claim is that the fact that trained viewers can distinguish among twelve distinct plotlines in shows like The Sopranos is evidence enough to prove how watching TV help people develop their intellectual abilities. The complex concepts like “multi-threading” which Johnson uses for this process is contested by Stevens by her observation that this essentially leads people to watch more of TV and nothing else that enhances real intelligence.

The presence of advertisements amidst shows like 24 (which Johnson lauds as ‘nutritional’) and the racial profiling, misrepresentation of communities and endorsement of torture are issues of major concern as far as Stevens is concerned, than how the plotlines challenge the viewers’ cognitive faculties. However, Stevens does not adhere to the wet-blank Puritanism of the anti-TV crowd which assumes that a week with no TV will make people smarter. Both the extreme views are laughable for their lack of clear understanding and tendency to generalize.

Stevens believes that TV shows are “neither like a brain liquefying poison nor a salutary tonic”. It would make sense if discerning adults would be more self-aware of the right dosage of TV shows for them than being over concerned about the insanely good or bad effects of TV on others, especially children. Stevens observes that the best way to counter Johnson’s argument would be to reverse the equally baseless view by ant-TV crowd – just turn off TV till Sunday and see if you get any dumber. 2. Dana Stevens criticizes the way Steven Johnson tries to attach complex concepts from behavioral and cognitive sciences in arguing that TV shows make people smarter.

The natural process of watching TV as a means of entertainment is unnecessarily complicated by Johnson. The argument that shows like The Sopranos and 24 challenge the intellectual faculties of viewers and lead them to “multi-threading” is baseless in Stevens’s opinion. These shows have questionable quality in its technical and ideological content which are of more concern to Stevens than the sweeping remark that they make viewers sophisticated by challenging their intellect. Stevens finds Jonhson’s views ridiculous to the extent that they could be compared to the eccentricities of the anti-TV crowd who believe that turning off TV for a week would make people smarter. 4. If given an opportunity, I assume Steven Johnson may counter Dana Stevens’s view as heavily influenced by culture studies, to the extent that it does not address the original arguments which belong to the different discipline of cognitive sciences.

Though the arguments may sound logical and impressive from the periphery, they do not contest any of Johnson’s claims regarding the pattern in which human mind works while watching TV shows. While the views regarding the socio-cultural issues related TV shows may be significant, it could not discount the fact that every cognitive act has its effect of the overall development of human psyche. Therefore, Johnson could argue that Stevens ends up providing impulsive reactions to the original article without really contesting or proving anything.