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Scientific American on Television Addiction
Etcetera writes: "The Drudge Report had an interesting link to a Scientific American article on Television Addiction. Talks about some of the quantifiable effects TV watching can have on the body. Very interesting read. There's also a paragraph or two at the end about game/computer use and why that might be a *little* bit different. But, similar to Jon Katz's essay Browsing Alone, they conclude that when a habit interferes with a growing, active life, it should be taken seriously."
E.M. Forster was writing about people isolated by technology in "The Machine Stops", 90 years ago. So it's not a new concept that our machines are isolating us from one another, and that we get addicted to connecting with our gadgets, not with each other.
C'mon, who still watches TV? I'm too busy refreshing Slashdot.
-- Dan
I know that tossing my TV was one of the best things I've ever done. No more mind-numbing hours in front of the tube soaking up ads from corporations I really don't like, no more seeing fake images of how I should like and behave and waste money. And best of all, spending more real *quality* time with my girlfriend, getting outside, even posting to slahdot.
"...when a habit interferes with a growing, active life, it should be taken seriously."
I take my masturbation very seriously.
Isn't this story available on the Discovery Channel or some TV show?
I was a tv addict. Even though we didn't get cable back just a few years I would sit down and watch whatever was on and when it was done I would watch what was on next. It didn't have too be good, just on (ok, maybe not football, but that is about it). Out of the 5 channels I would find the "best" show and watch it. I was distructive and time wasting. When someone else was watching tv I would sit down and watch. The tv would just draw me over. It really stinked. When I went off to RIT I didn't bring a tv, life was good and I learned a lot and worked on projects. When moving into a new home with a few other guys for the year I found one of them bringing a tv, but not only a tv, but a tivo! I thought I was in for it, but to my surprise found just the other way around. With tivo I rarely ever view actual tv when it is on. When I had some free time I would turn it on and see what was in the lineup. These 10 shows that we all liked and only these 10 shows would be listed. I would watch 1 and when the show was over it didn't continue over to the next show on that station, but brought you back to the menu. There I was able to asses what I had to do and if something was more important I would turn off the tv knowing it would all be there for me later. There are two factors to this that halped me. First being when the show was over it was _over_. Second being that I didn't have to stay around and watch the 10 oclock news to see the top story of xyz sense I knew that tivo would record it and if I could see it when I had the time (and only the 2 minute story that I wanted to see, deleting it after that).
To sum up I moved out of that house and recently found a store shelf tivo as the local circut city for $50. You can guess that I walked out the door with a grin that day.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Quite an interesting article - for me, my family was never much into TV, but I always had friends whose families were. I still have memories of seeing an entire family gathered around a TV, staring blankly into it as Jeopardy or The Price Is Right would blare into their skulls... zero conversation, dinner plates on their laps... yikes.
I routinely go without TV - I just moved to a new country in August and only plugged my TV in Sept. 11th at the urgent insisting of a friend's IM.
Wondering if anyone else has comments or similar preferences, for I never thought about it before I read this article - I have zero interest in "pre-produced" TV shows. Virtually everything I watch is either live, (ie the news), or more commonly what I would call non-produced or underproduced footage: auto and bike racing on Speedvision, Cops, America's most Inbred Drunk Drivers, When Ex-Girlfriends Attack, TLC / Disco channel etc etc...
Of course for the amount of time I spent online... I'm almost tempted to read that Katz article... no wait somebody slap me.
.
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Personally, I feel that the greater problem is that people tend to objectilfy stuff which they see on TV with their own personal life, I think due to the nature of the medium. For example it is not uncommon today to see parents watching their childen playing, a situation unheard of years ago, the only reason for the emergence of this pattern is that such people have become scared of the peadofile, or kidnapper, becasue of news reports or whatever. However the chances of any misadventure are so small, that it is not worth depriveing childen of some freedom in their childhood and the resulting psycological damage. If you don't like that example imagine all the people who stopped reading all their mail with that Antrax scare a few months back. None of this is helped by the people who report the news.
This has greater context if you consider question's like, "would America pulled out of WWII if CNN had been on omenha beach"
I would love to chuck out all the tv's tomorrow if only to prevent this nation becoming a land of hysterics unable to walk down the street lest the sky fall on their head. Or worst, Apathic to any change in their life.
To me TV represents, what Sartre called bad faith, being a force of objectification with the final aim being the disinfrancement of the human sprite. Without the pretension: A mild form of conditioning, and this is the far greater harm then any concerns of health.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
I tend to watch more TV in the winter, depending on what is happening "in Town"
I think TV addiction is a pretty clear problem in Suburbs, ever drove through one in the early evening? There is nothing going on there, you don't see anyone on the street, nothing.
For me, TV becomes less and less " a problem" great, so i have some time to watch Enterprise? I watch it, I am out ? Oh well, sometime they show a re-run.
I think TV addiction exists, but I am not so sure that the TV alone is at fault. There are some interresting books out there relating certain behaviour to where you live, and quite frankly after reading this I cannot see myself ever move away from a big city into the suburbs. (And yes, I HATE suburbia, maybe because I moved from Europe to North America).
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
What constitutes a "growing, active life" is up to society. Likewise, habit is defined the same way. I spend 8 hours a day in front of a flickering box myself--but it's called work, and by society's definition, is probably part of a growing, active life. TV addiction? Yeah, whatever. Defined by people addicted to their own intellectualism--how much credit can you give it? It's not that I don't agree--I do. I'm sure some people watch more TV than they should. But addiction in general? It's human nature--we just put a friendly face on the vice that we like. TV, internet, pornography, drugs, religion, jobs, morality--eventually we'll have a disorder for everything.
I think I've once and for all found the secret to breaking TV addiction, and it is...
Ooh, The Simpsons is on! bbl.
Want Linux games? HERE.
This was on RFN at the beginning of the week.
according to the article, the simple formal features of television - cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises - activate an instinctive response, a normal visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel stimulus, a built-in sensitivity to movement and potential predatory threats. Thus, it is the form, not the content, of television that is unique, and contributes to the impulse to keep attention on the screen.
But addicts will tend to try to explain away their impulses as normal rational behavior.
"Just watch, I can quit any time I want ..."
And the conclusion you cite are not really the main thrust of the article, unless you happen to be hypersensitive to the issue.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
No, the sky is not falling... as I sit here with my 500+ channels of digital cable (and still usually end up watching Law & Order or the History Channel [have you seen all that new color WWII footage?]) while surfing on DSL.
I think the real issue is that people today have too much control over their stimuli- channel surfing and web surfing.... if you don't like what you see, change is only one click away. Unfortunately reality doesn't exactly work that way.
I look at the number of kids today who are diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and aside from the toxic parenting these kids endured, the kids' poor coping skills are arguable reinforced by the infinite options they are given when "surfing" whatever they are viewing. Most parents end up NOT giving the kid an "option" whether to "clean their rooms" or whatever simple task, and the entire household explodes for an evening of a police visit, a possible fifth degree domestic assault, and a trip to a shelter for some kid. This happens all the time in surburbs all over the place. (I moonlight in emergency social services with the County- so this is first hand info.).
I haven't even mentioned ADD or ADHD- two diagnoses that I feel are more or less environmentally conditioned- but that would take us way off-topic. But both "attention" disorders could as easily be characterized as involving kids who have the ability to pay close attention to what they "choose" to pay attention to- they simply lack skills to pay attention to what they are "required" to (such as authority, teachers, etc.).
I really believe technology changes the way the mind operates. On a grand scale, we certainly feel more connected to the world at large with air travel, international long-distance, email, cable TV, etc... vs. living on a "flat world" with an ocean that extends infinitely filled with sea monsters. On a smaller level, I've lost my capacity to easily remember phone numbers in the days of speed dial, my cell phone that holds hundreds of numbers, and five times as many local area codes to keep track of.
Getting back to TV- watch some old movie on TCM... it is like watching a play. Each scene can last for several minutes before there is a cut, and shadows are often projected on the wall behind the actors. These movies really stand out as being "staged" compared to an MTV video where I'm lucky to catch a camera shot that lasts more then two seconds- even though many videos are literally shot on a stage. It seriously would not surprise me if this affects how we think and process the world- it is almost digital vs. analog- that we receive the world in a billion still images vs. drawn out and linear. Movies use jumbled time... beginnings/middles/ends have lost their meaning. In personal relationships, people often start out in what would once be considered the middle of a relationship.... courtship is either redefined or non-existent, depending on your definitions. I could go on and on.
Whether there is any causality here is open to debate- but if you believe at the very least that TV/media gives people what they want, it definitely has changed over the last 40 years.
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
What's the definition of interferring with a growing active life? Instead of hitting the pub after work, I usually go straight home and work on one of my many silly projects. On weekends I take a break from my projects and play video games. I hang out with my friends maybe once a week, maybe less. My hobbies are programming (silly projects) and video games. I'm happy. Does that mean I'm addicted and should be weaned off? Says who?
[o]_O
It causes overweight not only because you don't move around, but it slows down metabolism while it makes you feel hungry and lets you eat tons of snacks while not beeing aware of it (->fat)
While your body goes into a sleep-like state, you feel very exhausted after long TV sessions; this really wrecks havoc on your immune system(->sick)
Watching TV before sleep forces your brain's nightly garbage collection to work on what you have seen on TV instead on your real life experiences, with negative effects on decision making and dealing with real life problems, up to causing serious mental diseases(->mad)
Watching TV makes the parts of you brain responsible for controlling your motion wither, which is known to negatively affect your intellectual capabilities (->stupid)
And finally the incredible amount of trash transmitted over U.S. TV can not have any positive effects on the spectator, and all this is regularily interrupted with a mixture of ads, many of them using sophisticated techniques to manipulate your mind. (I can not stand a U.S. TV program for more than a couple of minutes because among other things I am not used to these frequent breaks; it makes me so agressive that I have to switch it off)
I hope that one day the people responsible for this lunacy will have to pay for it.
p.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
I did a little math just before new years. I watched about 4 - 5 hours a day (That's 3 - 4 on a weeknight and about 6-7 on Saturday and Sunday).
I've been doing this since I was about 10. (My parents never stopped me) And now I'm 28.
So that's 4.5 Hours x 7 days x 52 weeks x 18 years.
That's 29484 Hours or 3.36 Years of my life. An entire 12% of my entire life!
So I decided that I would cut it out till June. And give it a rest. Man it's hard. The first thing I realized was the reflex that I had developed. Come home sit and watch. Wake up sit and watch.
But the biggest thing was the amount of time I had. I always wondered how people find the time to keep there place sparkling clean, stay in shape, pack a lunch for work, and become good at sports.
Another thing that I think TV does, when TV is you primary source of entertainment and social interaction it warps the mind. TV lets you hand out with hot chicks, go on a thrilling adventure, and fall in love. You begin to believe (subconsciously) that you really do have a relationship to these people. It tricks the mind into believing that you are a smart, good looking, intelligent person with a ton of interesting friends and stories.
As soon as I pulled the plug I was clear that I was an awkward, quite, unkempt person, with no girlfriend and few friends. But now I can take the new time I have and focus on becoming the person I want to be.
Well I'd like to end on a positive not, but I would be lying if all you had to do was pull the plug to fix your life. No all pulling the plug does is show you how much work lies ahead of you. Its going to be a long time before I can change my life so that I don't miss TV.
Maybe I'm just getting old and aware of the passage of time, but I've wound up whittling down the number of TV shows I watch to a select few and getting nearly all my news from online, my local newspaper, and a magazine. This despite the fact that I have a very nice satellite dish and HDTV PCI card. There's just too many other things I want to do. The TV stays off for many days of the week, and I don't miss it. (Darn the WB and UPN for making decent shows! Even Enterprise has gotten good lately.) What's disturbing is the contrast with the rest of my family, who despite lacking the technotoys I have spend far more time in front of the tube. It's unbelievable how much crap my brother watches.
This from a guy who's not very sociable.
Now, take my Internet feed away and I'm going to hurt somebody...
by Godfrey Reggio, one of the genii behind Koyaanisqatsi. It's a 8 min film watching kids watching television!
I saw part of this without remembering what it was: I was initially disturbed that a movie would make fun of retarded kids! The groups of 3-10 four year olds stared blankly at the camera, mouths often open, swaying gently. Watching children watching television was unnerving, seeing them be still and quiet for many seconds just didnt seem right.
Evidence is chilling, and quite moving -- go see it.
For some reason, it just doesn't do much for me. I'll watch TV at the gym while exercising, but that's about it. The stuff is so boring. And there are so many commercials.
His arguments for the elimination of TV are grouped under 4 headings:
The citation is:
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, 1978, Quill.
ISBN 0-688-03274-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-688-08274-2 (pbk)
For the sake of argument, say the top three computer activities are web surfing, chatting, and playing games. Web surfing is essentially reading, which the article mentions early on as an acceptable alternative to TV. Chatting, while clearly not as good as actual face to face interaction, does at least involve some mental involvement, as well as a social element. Game playing probably gets the worst rap of these activities, but even it consists of some sort of intellectual stimulation.
TV's real problem is that it is a passive medium; the only choice a viewer makes is which channel to watch. Computers, by contrast, are almost completely interactive. Nearly anything a person uses a computer for requires some amount of thought, and for that reason it's really misleading to declare computer use analagous to TV viewing. Even the verb is different - people don't "use TVs" or "watch computers."
One point in the article was right on. Managing your media time is hard at times. Particularly bad times. Escape is easy. This problem is not totally the viewers fault though. A lot of it has to do with how television is structured today.
Recently I got rid of the Dish Network system in my home. For about 2 months, the family went basically nuts. More fights, and more sleep. After a while, things changed. The kids began to use the computer more for reading, chatting, and of course, games.
After about a year or so of this, I have noted some real changes. The family in general does more things together, homework is actually getting done, and the kids enjoy sports more and they actually read! (both online and books) We all still like our television, but now everyone has focused on the thing or two that they really want to watch, rather than watching everything all the time. The perception about television has changed for the better.
As a kid, I did not have cable. Just broadcast television. Watched everything of interest, but also was outdoors a lot, and in front of the computer a lot. A lot like the family is now. Later on when cable became avaliable, I noticed the demands on my time. There was so much to relate to! My viewing went way up, but my enjoyment did not in general. Sure there are good things on cable, but a whole lot of time is spent either choosing, or waiting not actually watching with real interest.
So there is something to the large number of channels that changes TV for people. You go from the perception that there may be something good on tonght, to a feeling that you are always missing something good. I now know the truth in this. 150 channels means 148 channels full of crap at any one time. Not really any different from broadcast television in the practical sense, but the perception is very different, and that perception changes habits. Hey! it's the syndication tax!
So to wind this up and go a shade off topic, I miss premium television, but am annoyed by the fact that it is not offered without all the crap. Kind of like a PC without windows. Hard to find.
Most people here really don't like the idea of pay per view, but in the context of television, it would be a very good thing provided that one would be able to actually choose what they want to view. Producers would have to compete on the merits of what they produce without the filler programming filling in the dead time. I would easily pay the same dollars for some choice as to what comes in and what does not.
The media companies know this so, pay per view will be added to the endless wave of junket media being pimped right now as the "best in quality home entertainment" or some other equally mind numbing crap, when it could be a vehicle to make TV enjoyable and manageable again.
Tv is addictive by its very nature. Problem is that the producers exploit this feature rather than actually produce quality programming.
So for now, I will remain a jaded television consumer looking the TiVo over closely while finding other interesting things to do.
Blogging because I can...
I'm not convinced that it's really addictive though. When I have access to a TV, I watch it far too much. When I don't, I don't miss it at all, and I've gone as much as a year without watching any measurable amount of TV, and with no side effects due to withdrawal.
I personally found the article not quite up to SciAm's usual snuff. Typically there is a lot of science and you come away with some stuff to think about... this one just grazed on a couple interesting habits and mentioned a couple studies without really posing any dramatic questions.
Krispy Cream is people
The article ends by saying "it does constitute a kind of dependence and should be taken seriously", which is a far cry from "undoing of young americans"
Just because somebody has a PhD in back of their name doesn't give them any special insight.
I do think having a PhD in the back of your name does give you a special insight, becuase you can trust that the person actually read what they were talking about.
Krispy Cream is people
Strobing lights of many different kinds, (TV included), puts the viewer into a semi-hypnotic state which allows for messages of all sorts to be more easily absorbed by the mind.
Music videos are particularly nasty in this regard;
The messages in most pop music are moronic: Love is the most important thing in the world. You are not having enough sex. You must have low self esteem without love or sex. --Not to mention the host of responses you are 'supposed' to have to all manner of stimuli.
Charming.
TV doesn't need to have subliminal messages to brain-wash its audience. The programming itself is more than enough to do the job.
And here's the scary part: The effects on society are invisible, because society has already been formed into the shape TV wants it to be. --That is, the end result is considered normal because the condition is ubiquitous.
But TV is just a small part of the whole. Every little jab adds up.
Fluoride
Cell phone EM
Asparatame
Advertising
Air pollutants
Too-many work hours
Pre-natal sonic scans
Unhealthy food combinations
Propaganda and corporate agendas in: News & educational programming
Zero-exercise car culture
Recreational drugs
Non-recreational drugs, (anti-depressants, antihistamines. .
To name just a few of the bigger stabs. There are many more subtle attacks. Any one or two of them by themselves are not enough to completely deplete the bulk of humanity, but they quickly add up.
The end result?
A populace which is soft, dumb & easy to manipulate. Ripe for. . .
Hm.
Well, we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?
-Fantastic Lad --"All your base are belong to us"
Nietzsche hated anti-Semitism pretty violently. He also suggested that European culture would be nothing without Jewish culture. He also had a lot of contempt for Germany. He did suggest that 19th century European Judaism was then the most prominent form of ressentiment, which might annoy some people, but was probably true. (Today I'd say that feminism held that slot. For him to make that claim about European Judaism doesn't make him hate Jews any more than making such a claim about feminism makes me hate women.)
However, his sister Elizabeth was a German nationalist. She heavily edited and controlled the publication of his later works, when he was pretty much a helpless invalid. She also got an imprimatur on releases of some of his earlier works. I once saw an edition of Zarathustra from the teens in which she had an "explanatory" preface, most of which was nonsense. Nietzsche himself didn't publish part 4 of Zarathustra, except in a very limited edition for his friends, for fear that he would be tried for blasphemy.
The best example of this is The Will to Power. Nietzsche never wrote a book with that title. He wanted to write one with that title and wrote down a whole lot of notes. After madness or tertiaty syphilis or whatever took hold, Elizabeth essentially assembled an original work cut-and-pasted from the notes.
By the way, what's Ecce Humo? "Behold the Smoke" or "Behold the Chick Pea Dip"?
an addiction is something that you choose to do in order to relieve a physical or psychological pressure that doesn't solve the problem -- it masks it. Yes, that's the critical part that was left out of the definition. In regards to TV watching, the research showed various chemical and brainwave changes roughly corresponding to relaxation -- but when the subjects turned the tube off after two hours or more, they soon became _less_ relaxed than before they started. That is, TV's immediate effect seems to solve stress, but if you lose control of the habit it leaves you more stressed out than before. Sounds a lot like heroin to me -- except there are a lot more people who can control their TV urges.
As for who is in control: Do you turn the TV on for one hour of Buffy and then turn it off, or do you turn the tube on and go looking for something fit to watch, then settle for the barely endurable?
One final note about starving Joe -- I very much doubt that he finds himself eating more than he intended...