I had been reading elsewhere that kids under 7 or so didn’t understand that TV wasn’t real. The suggested experiment was to ask “if you saw [TV person] eating a big bowl of popcorn on the TV, and the TV was turned upside down, what would happen?”. I tried this on Corwin and he told me that the popcorn would spill out. I was somewhat surprised, as I thought Corwin was aware of TV not being real. I noted this to Mom, at which point Corwin changed his answer to “nothing”, saying “they’re just on TV”.
I think that there is some confusion on the researchers part. In some sense, TV (at least non-animated TV) is “real” in that people actually performed the actions seen. So it may be that young kids don’t understand about video tapes and broadcasting. But Corwin at least understood the more important point that the people he saw were actors pretending to do stuff. By the time he was 4 or 5, I would tease him about doing something we’d just seen on TV. Corwin would just give me the “you’re so wierd, Dad” look and say “that’s TV. It’s not real”.
I don’t think that’s so strange. Certainly Corwin and I had done a lot of “pretend” ourselves, so it’s not a big mental leap to think that the people on TV are doing the same thing. Even in kindergarten Corwin was doing puppet plays and short scenes from plays or other kind of acting activities.
One of the things I like about Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network is their “behind the scenes” segments. It helps get across the concept that it’s all pretend. For Cartoon Network, the segments where they discuss various episodes with the animated characters or discussing casting issues on shows (the “Huckleberry Hound” as the original lead for “Thundarr the Barabarian” is quite amusing) seems to be part of an effort to help keep things in perspective for the kids. So it’s not all gloom on the TV front, although I do consider it a mark of good parenting if Corwin complains that we don’t let him watch enough TV.