Every day, TV provides an endless stream of bad models, especially concerning violence. In the United States of America, 81 percent of all programs contain violence, there are nearly 200 hours of violent programs per week, and some of them are culturally relevant, others are often quite unrealistic. For instance, an astounding 73 percent of violent characters go unpunished, and 58 percent of the violent acts do not lead to painful results. Only 16 percent of all programs show any realistic long-term consequences for violence. Other than pulling out the plug, what can parents do about television’s negative effects on children? Actually, quite a lot. Children typically model parents’ TV viewing habits, and they are guided by parents’ reactions to programs. Parents can make a big difference if they do the following. Parents as TV Guides: Limit total view time, and schedule when your children can watch TV so negative information and images does not dominate your child’s view on the World. Closely monitor what your children are watching. If you object to the material, turn off the TV and have other games or programs on standby. Actively seek programs your children will enjoy, especially those that model good behavior and excellent social attitudes. Watch TV with your children so you can answer their questions and tell them what is real and what is not. Help you children know the difference between reality and fantasies. Reply to distortions and stereotypes as they appear on screen.

You may even want to record their shows first, watch them, then let your children view them alone, and have a discussion after the show to explain to them why or why not the program is acceptable. Discuss the social conflicts and violent situations, shown on TV. Although these things do happen in real life, they are not normal. Why is it that we never see anything good on the News or TV. We see more news about dogs than good news or financial reports. Encourage your children to propose more mature, realistic, and beneficial responses to situations. By following these guidelines, you can help children learn to enjoy televisions, without being overly influenced by programs and advertisers. Identifying and classifying abnormal behavior is worthwhile and necessary. Maladaptive behavior patterns, unhealthy personality types, and excessive levels of anxiety underlie many mental disorders. The most severe forms of psychopathology involve emotional extremes and/or a break with reality. Psychologists have discovered that people can learn to control bodily activities that were once thought to be involuntary. This is done with biological feedback, in which information response is used to achieve bodily control. If I were to say you, “Raise the temperature of your right hand,” you probably could not because you would not know if you were succeeding. To make your task easier, we could attach a sensitive thermometer to your hand. The thermometer could be wired so that an increase in temperature would activate a signal light. Then, all you would have to do is try to keep the light on as much as possible. With practice and the help of biofeedback, you could learn to raise your hand temperature at will.

With a lot of work, one can overcome physical and mental limitations, as long as you are measuring your progress. For instance, people have been trained to prevent migraine headaches with biofeedback. Sensors are taped to patients’ hands and foreheads. Patients then learn to redirect blood flow away from the head to their extremities. Since migraine headaches involve excessive blood flow to the head, biofeedback helps patients reduce the frequency of their headaches. Early success led many to predict that biofeedback would offer a cure for psychosomatic illnesses, anxiety, phobias, drug abuse, and a long list of other problems. In reality, biofeedback has been helpful, but not an instant cure, it takes time and a lot of effort to recover. Biofeedback can help relieve muscle-tension headaches, migraine headaches, and chronic pain. It shows promise for lowering blood pressure and controlling heart rhythms. The technique has been used with some success to control epileptic seizures and hyperactivity in children. Insomnia also responds to biofeedback therapy. How does the biofeedback help? Some researchers believe that many of its benefits arise from the mind program being generally relaxed. The system simply acts as a mirror to help a person perform tasks involving self-regulation. Just as a mirror does not comb your hair, biofeedback does not do anything by itself, it can supplement in making desired changes in one’s behavior.