{"id":37796,"date":"2024-10-14T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37796"},"modified":"2024-09-09T16:34:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T23:34:19","slug":"video-killed-the-radio-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/video-killed-the-radio-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Killed the Radio Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

On August 1, 1981, just after midnight, MTV (Music Television) debuted the first “music video.” It was set to the song Video Killed the Radio Star<\/em> by the Buggles. MTV went on to set the standard for visual content and propel artists into virtual superstardom. Ask any child of the 80’s, and they will tell you that MTV was the thing. I, however, had religious killjoys for parents (said sarcastically), so I was relegated to catching glimpses of MTV at friend’s houses.<\/p>\n

Today, MTV is a has-been network replete with lame shows about teen pregnancy and stupid human pranks. Nobody talks much about MTV, the network that changed the game and shaped a generation. So, why am I?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m convinced we wouldn’t have YouTube, Twitter (X), TikTok, Vimeo, or Snapchat without an MTV.<\/p>\n

One could argue that Streaming Social Media Killed the Video Show<\/em>. Better yet, today, you don’t have a star without social media. MTV’s shaping of a generation is dwarfed by what Haidt calls “the great rewiring of childhood” of social media and internet usage.<\/p>\n

This brings me back to the Buggles and their 1980s album The Age of Plastic.<\/em> All of the tracks on this album deal with the impact of modern technology. The theme of the first single, Video Killed the Radio Star, is nostalgia, remembering the technological changes of the 1960s\u00a0and how the current generation wouldn’t appreciate the past. The song expresses concerns about 20th-century inventions that affect media arts such as photography, cinema, radio, television, and music recordings, all set to 132 beats per minute.<\/p>\n

The song’s most potent and revealing lyric comes in the chorus: \u00a0“Video killed the radio star, in my mind and in my car, we can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far.”<\/p>\n

Have we gone too far? Jonathan Haidt, in\u00a0The Anxious Generation, <\/em>does NOT believe so. He says we must be kind and rewind\u2014now.<\/p>\n

Children have replaced their play-based childhood with a phone-based childhood. Look around you, and you will see that this is an accurate assessment. Haidt’s facts, figures, stats, and survey results give us quantifiable proof of this reality. As a result of this global shift, mental health risk has increased substantially (ie, depression, hospitalization, suicidal ideation, and death). The age of plastic (with a nod to the Buggles) is now the age of plasticity, <\/em>in which brain change and vulnerability during puberty are being stunted due to increased screen time and social media exposure. Haidt gives attention to four “harms” of a phone-based childhood: \u00a0social deprivation<\/strong> (decline in face-to-face interactions), sleep deprivation<\/strong> (ease of access to mobile gaming, video streaming, and doom-scrolling), attention fragmentation<\/strong> (constant notifications and alerts), and addiction<\/strong> (desires are being hacked, and actions manipulated).<\/p>\n

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to observe each of these harms in this generation. Just look at the bent neck, scrolling thumb, and glazed-over stares. You’ll see them at any bus stop, living room, street corner, or school playground. It’s like an episode of The Walking Dead.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Lest I\/we point fingers at “those dang kids,” watch for it too in the parents, grandparents, and older generations. Screens are no respecter of persons, yet, make no mistake, it\/they are targeting the young. Perhaps social media is the new smoking. Maybe the endless, scrolling loop of likes and thumbs up is the new Joe Camel.<\/a><\/p>\n

So, have we gone too far? Can we rewind? I don’t think we can, and I am naturally an optimist. The proverbial cat is out of the bag. The train has left the station. Name your idiom. But we can tame the beast better. That’s what I appreciate about The Anxious Generation.<\/em> It doesn’t just give us the problem. It presents potential solutions that could actually work. Here they are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. No smartphones before high school.<\/li>\n
  2. No social media before 16.<\/li>\n
  3. No devices (phones, tablets, watches) in schools.<\/li>\n
  4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These are great recommendations! Will they garner 100% participation? Absolutely not. But they are worth a shot and could be vital in turning around an epidemic of mental illness. If my wife and I were starting a family right now, I would immediately integrate these recommendations into our lifestyle and child(‘s) upbringing. In small ways, I have already been integrating a variation of some of them into my own personal life. I charge my devices away from my bedside and use an analog alarm clock to wake up. I have established “15 minutes-per-day of social media” restrictions, and an out-of-state friend has the screen-time codes. I try (key word ‘try’) to have “Tech-Free Mondays,” and my smartphone is set to never<\/strong> issue notifications, dings, or visual alerts. I check it when I want, not when it tells me to. I am my smartphone’s “Master,” it is not<\/strong> mine.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    I really believe\u00a0The Anxious Generation<\/em> by Jonathan Haidt will be considered the most important book of 2024. And, if not, then it ought to be. This is a pivotal book, yet unfortunately, those who need to pick it up probably will not because their hands and hearts are already occupied with their devices. However, my prayer is that Haidt’s simple yet powerful recommendations find their way into the global zeitgeist, bringing about significant change and a reversal of the epidemic of mental illness that The Anxious Generation<\/em>\u00a0exposes.<\/p>\n

    Let it be so, Lord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    On August 1, 1981, just after midnight, MTV (Music Television) debuted the first “music video.” It was set to the song Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. MTV went on to set the standard for visual content and propel artists into virtual superstardom. Ask any child of the 80’s, and they will tell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[3214,3215,1214],"class_list":["post-37796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-anxious","tag-generation","tag-haidt","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37796"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38304,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37796\/revisions\/38304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}