Thinking Outside the idiot Box was written by Dana Stevens as a direct response to Steven Johnson's article Watching TV Makes You Smarter. Johnson believes that TV shows have become more complicated, because the viewers have grown smarter from watching them. He argues that watching TV gives you “cognitive benefits... attention, patience, retention, and the parsing of narrative threads.” Stevens argues that television industries have complicated their storylines and filled their shows with rapid-fire information, in order to KEEP their viewers from thinking, so that the viewers will only think about the future shows.
24 is one example of how producers are keeping their audiences, with complicated plots and intense action. The show 24 has various plot lines which allude back to previous shows and keep the individual in suspense Thus, the viewer has to think back and make those connections, in order to keep up. This keeps the individual distracted from evaluating the “nutritional value” of the show.
Stevens then moves her argument on to discuss who should deem a show to be nutritional. Duringthe TV Turnoff Week in the year 2005, Kalle Lasn failed to turn off a TV in an airport, because it was a nature show. “Who decides?” which shows are better to watch? One individual could be offended by the living arrangements of a couple in a show, and thus deem the show to be inappropriate When we try to evaluate if a show is inappropriate versus appropriate, we are taking responsibility and freedom away from adults to make their own decisions. It should remain the individual's choice to decide if a show is worth viewing, just as the person should decide if watching TV is a smart thing for them to do. However, “There couldn't be a better time to test Steven Johnson's theory” than now. Just don't watch TV for a few days, and see if it makes you dumber.
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