5. Frightening power.

Today I was at work, I'm a nanny.

The television set is seldom on in this family's house. The kids and I have watched maybe 2 movies, but we've never used the television otherwise. They are not a big media family, in fact, the 8 year old girl gets upset when her 5 year old brother wants to play video games or watch "Star Wars", explaining to him that it will rot his brain.

But since President Barak Obama was in Orange County today I decided to try to watch it on the news. However, I missed it because I was outsmarted by this family's tricky television/remote system.

Eventually I got to television on, though the news about Obama was long gone (I was just determined to be smarter than the TV and actually turn it on!). It was on in the background for approximately 20 minutes.

I tried to talk to the 8 year old girl. She was sitting on the couch located directly in front of the television. As I mentioned, she's a smart girl: she understand the evils of media. Yet the television had captured her.

It was during a commercial about something boring like insurance or health care. It wasn't even a funny or engaging commercial! But it caught her attention. And held it. For the following 5 minutes I could not get her to respond to me. She wouldn't even acknowledge my presence. I was standing in front of the television, and she just shifted her head to see around me.

When she snapped out of her daze I questioned her. She didn't know what I was referring to and didn't believe that she had zoned out for a solid 5 minutes.

Television is addicting. It has immeasurable power over our attention span, especially children's attention span.