Fools and mental food

Several times when some of the earlier results of our research were presented, somebody from the field of child care would get up to state that he had never seen a child who influenced by comic books. This statement in itself is preposterous, of course. For nothing that occupies a child for several hours a day over a long period can be entirely without influence on him. The trouble with these arguments was that these people had not studied the contents of comic books, had failed for years to take notice of their very existence as a potentially harmful factor, and had never examined children for their influence. Or the proud protagonists of negative results had—without realizing the implications—even encouraged children to read crime comic books as recreation and proper mental nourishment!