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Reblogged by jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein"):

jeffjarvis ("Jeff Jarvis") wrote:

The surgeon general just went on TV to tell Morning Joe social media is dangerous to youth.
Fifty-one years ago, the surgeon general contended television was dangerous to youth. In both cases, they talk correlation, not causation.
And forty years ago, the surgeon general was contending the video games were dangerous to youth.
See also Kirsten Drotner in Paedaggoica Historica on histrorical amnesia:
#MoralPanic #MediaPanic

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/22/archives/surgeon-general-wants-tv-to-curb-violence-for-children.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/10/us/around-the-nation-surgeon-general-sees-danger-in-video-games.html

Attachments:

• But this belief is facilitated by, indeed founded on, an intrinsic historical amnesia. Every new panic develops as if it was the first time such issues were debated in public, and yet the debates are strikingly similar. This amnesia is closely related to another common characteristic of the panics: their historical incorpora- tion. The intense preoccupation with the latest media fad, immediately relegates older media to the shadows of acceptance. Thus, the trends towards cultural democratisation are chiefly seen with media that we have grown accustomed to, media that have proved their innocence, so to speak. So, today comics can be hailed in safety: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were appropriated by pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the 1960s, the ICA in London and other renowned museums went on to promote cultural cross-overs as gallery pieces, and even the comic figure Tin-Tin now has his own museum. But the new media, such as home videos in the 1980s and in the 1990s action-games on cd-rom, still conjure up anxieties that are very similar to those expressed over periodicals a hundred years ago.