Did the spread of TV cause rising crime rates?

Just one generation after TV became omnipresent, our politics collapsed entirely and we elected a bad actor who played a sunny optimist to replace a serious person who dared warn us that we weren't going to like the ending if we kept up like we were going. Image via Wikipedia

The sequel to the much-overrated "Freakonomics" includes one claim that is likely very well-founded, even if the "freakonomists" (blarg) are too much creatures of pop culture to see the reason:

Less controversially, and even less categorically clear, is the research that links the rise in crime with the spread of television across the US, which was staggered over the 1940s and 1950s and thus offers the social scientist a rare opportunity to observe human behaviour with a "control" sample. Yes, for every extra year a young American was exposed to TV in his first 15 years, there is a 4 per cent rise in the number of property-related crimes later in life, and a 2 per cent rise in violent crime arrests. But the freakonomists are at a loss to say why this should be; the biggest effect is among those who watched TV from birth to age four – little of it violent. However, anyone who has a second look at the sadism, mutilation and torture see in the average Tom and Jerry cartoon might beg to differ.

The issue has nothing to do with the content of the shows/cartoons, it has to do with brain development or lack thereof. The "Golden Years" of brain development (age 0-3) are followed by a long period where there is still some brain development (albeit more slowly). Exposing children's brains to TV during those formative years is not just child abuse, but societal suicide.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we, as a society, are falling well short of meeting the challenges of our age, such as in our failure to respond to the freight train of climate chaos that is hurdling towards us. As a class, the Americans not yet retired from work are greatly handicapped by brains that spent years anesthetized in a soothing, sleep-like trance, rather than developing problem-solving skills.

As the late, great Neil Postman put it, we're "Amusing Ourselves to Death." Americans today keep waiting for the magical solution to ride in just in the nick of time, right before the final commercial break . . . after all, we spent years learning that this is how all problems get solved.

UPDATE: Turns out the "Freakonomist" is really just a junk-scientist spewing nonsense about the greatest challenge we face.