Renowned media expert Neil Postman of New York University said that between the ages of six and eighteen, the average child spends some fifteen thousand to sixteen thousand hours in front of a TV, whereas he spends only thirteen thousand hours in school.8 Postman said that during the first twenty years of an American child’s life, he will see some one million commercials, at the rate of about a thousand per week!9 As to television’s effects, they are infamous: Shortened attention spans Diminution of linguistic powers Reduced capacity for abstraction
