Horrors - literally!! Swung by a local senior residence to whisk a grannie client out to supper & discovered a) two new HUGE television screens flanking the bar of the once cozy club room were tuned to the same news network, with their volume up, and b) another HUGE television screen had been installed where residents & their guests turn to enter the large, once fairly welcoming commons area, and IT was turned to the same news show, with its sound up.
There was no getting away from Ebola! Isis! Economic doom! Inept White House! Clueless congress! Russia on the rise, US on the down slope!
Yikes! I was battling depression for the rest of the night. And my grannie client once again asked, several times, a question new this week - "What is the state of the world."
My gosh. While television has the potential to have a positive impact in the life of olders, you don't need a scientific study to know that news networks are the worst possible choice for lounge viewing. There are far wiser choices. Even if an older requested to see Fox or MSNBC or CNN, its impact on the entire group - blazing from a huge screen, or in this case three - would be atrocious.
The key, as
pointed out in the article, Lifeline or Leisure? TV's Role in the Lives of the Elderly, from the Center for Media Literacy, is choice. It's common sense to know that having world & national news blaring from no fewer than three over-sized screens could have a seriously detrimental impact on anyone's state of mind, not just an older person's.
What were they thinking??
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