Television: "the danger is not the behaviour it produces, but the behavior it prevents"

Any scientist or educator, concerned to get society to consider vital issues, or any Humanist, concerned to get attention to good literature, has to admit that the effect of the mass media has been to trivialize. It argues that it can survive financially only by putting the sensational and the superficial rather than fundamental and progressive issues before the public. The reading of great books and the time normally available in other generations for individual thought, reflection, and the formation of independent opinion have inevitably suffered grievously with the crescendo of activity in the mass media. In aspiring to a true democracy, one cannot take lightly what is now happening to the mind of the average man. A survey shows that ninety-six percent of American homes have one or more television sets, and that the home set is turned on more than six hours a day (rather more than four hours for each occupant). Bronfenbrenner rightly concludes "the danger is not the behavior it produces, but the behavior it prevents."

Raymond Cattell, Beyondism - A New Morality From Science, 1972