It would be crazy to deny that television has evolved, and I’m not referring only to technical details. Content may have lost quality in recent years, but it has definitely gained power of attraction, especially when it reaches the youngest. Photographer Donna Stevens captured that power in Idiot Box, a series of portraits of children trapped in what we could call pure hypnosis, while they watch cartoons on Netflix…
“Watching so much TV will make you stupid” is a classic phrase that millions of parents around the world have repeated, trying to keep their kids away from the small screen. Needless to say, its effectiveness is very low, and almost always more direct actions are needed to interrupt TV sessions. But the road became uphill for parents with the arrival of consoles, computers, smartphones and tablets. The television today is just one more option, and with the “on demand” content the Web offers, the concept of “screen time” cannot be easily suppressed.
Photographer Donna Stevens discovered this in the winter of 2013, when a cold wave hit New York. Her two children (one barely three years old at the time) spent hours glued to the iPad, thrilled with Netflix’s catalog. Stevens decided to look for those expressions in other children of a similar age, which led to the creation of Idiot Box. The process was simple: take a seat in front of the television and choose any cartoon they wanted to watch on Netflix. The only thing the photographer asked in return was that they not cover their faces or look at the camera… but the results clearly indicate that none of that happened.
In some ways, the children seem sedated. Is it a chemical response, or do they simply “switch off” in front of the screen’s stimulus? Stevens leaves her own questions on the table. Should parents be more careful about their little ones’ exposure to television? Is the new wave of “techno-paranoia” justified? If any of our readers have children, I would love to read their comments.
