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The 'Bad' Guy
Steven Johnson is the author of "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," in which he declares that "the most debased forms of mass diverson" hone mental skills.
(Helayne Seidman for The Washington Post)
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But, but, but . . .
Too many questions get played down -- or left out entirely -- as Johnson argues his case.
So you ask: What about all that sex and violence? It's not just the Parents Television Council that thinks the entertainment industry "has pushed the content envelope too far." Does Grand Theft Auto have to make people smarter by rewarding them for killing prostitutes?
Johnson doesn't quite answer this directly.
"I feel like the values questions, the violence questions, all those kind of content questions that I kind of put off to the side, I don't put off to the side because they're irrelevant," he says. Violence "is absolutely a legitimate thing to talk about." Take "24," for example. "I think it's a brilliant show on a whole host of levels, but the torture in it is really offensive."
Why not talk about it, then?
"Because we're only focusing on these other issues, and I think the cognitive stuff is as important. . . . What I'm trying to say is, let's put those questions aside and continue having that debate, but let me introduce you to this whole major story line that you haven't heard. And if you don't have that story line, then you can't make informed decisions about what your kids should be doing."
So how about the addiction thing?
"Everything Bad" sets out to explain why gamers willingly spend hours on tasks that seem, at least to a non-gamer, intensely boring. "The power of games to captivate involves their ability to tap into the brain's natural reward circuitry," Johnson writes. A bit later he acknowledges a small problem. "You might reasonably object that I have merely demonstrated that video games are the digital equivalent of crack cocaine."
Well, yeah, you bet, but when you do object, here comes that positive story line again.
Can't constantly gaming kids become addicted? "Absolutely. No question about it," Johnson agrees. But he says the brain's craving for rewards, like the Force in "Star Wars," can be used for good as well: "You can get them to do things much more challenging mentally than what I was doing when I was sitting around watching TV" as a kid.
Speaking of which: Some parents (you're one) object as much to television advertising as to the shows themselves. We don't want our kids constantly being told that buying stuff is the key to feeling good about themselves.
