All this seems fairly obvious at the same time we know that such studies are snapshots, and aren't necessarily doomsday scenarios. Nevertheless, the research gives parents that pause that depresses, which leads me back to my experience at the National Gallery of Art. If images can have negative consequences, they can influence in a positive way, too. Arts education, for example, can increase literacy. A new study by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum shows how. Dynamic approaches to viewing, discussing and creating works of art were found to improve the ability of third-graders to think and read.
This is hardly the equivalent of the Soviet Sputnik, the first ship in space in 1957, which galvanized the United States to increase spending on science and math education. The arts have never had a high priority in Washington. But had that mother at the Henri Rousseau show with her son known that he might gain more from watching the film about painting than in playing a solo electronic game, she could have done more to get him to pay attention.
Parents who worry about what their kids see on television or prowling the Internet should encourage them to visit the National Gallery's interactive art zone for children of different ages (http://www.nga.gov). Parents are so afraid not to be up-to-date and hip that often they allow children to determine what's best for them. You don't have to ban electronic games or television from a child's repertoire of fun and games, but there's a greater danger that parents will overlook more imaginative ways to engage their children.
We want our children to understand the latest developments in technology, but we should also want to stimulate their minds to appreciate beauty. Children today are subject to so much ugliness and brutality, we run the risk of depriving them of aesthetic triumphs. Once nearly every school child could quote that line from Keats: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." No longer true, and more's the pity.