Licking the Razor's Edge (2015)

*Interestingly enough, over half of all those polled believe that they watch too much TV,
almost 80% of all those polled realize that television violence leads to real-life
aggression, and over 70% of all parents polled would like to limit their children’s TV
time — and yet the statistics for watching television still continue to rise every year.
How can this be?
Well, as it turns out, watching television is extremely addictive …
HOW TV GETS YOU HOOKED
Recent research has shown that brain activity switches from the left to the right
hemisphere while watching television, with the right brain often being twice as active as
the left. This left-to-right brain crossover releases a surge of endorphins in the viewer’s
body. As we have learned in previous posts, endorphins are neurochemicals that are
structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). As
such, it can come as no surprise that activities that release these endorphins (like
watching television) are highly addictive.
Indeed, it has been shown in several studies that even casual television viewers
experience opiate-like withdrawal symptoms if they stop watching TV for a period of
time. In one of those experiments, 182 subjects agreed to kick their television viewing
habit for a year, with the added incentive of a substantial monetary payment if they
succeeded. None of them could resist the urge for longer than six months, and over time
all of them showed clear symptoms of opiate-withdrawal: intensified anxiety, chronic
frustration, and clinical depression.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WATCHING TV
While many sincerely believe that “watching just a little TV can’t hurt”, such people are
seriously mistaken. In fact, of all the addictions discussed in this series, television poses
one of the greatest threats to one’s quality of life.
In 1982, the National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services contracted the leading television researchers — including professors
from Harvard, Stanford and Yale — to summarize scientific opinion about the risks
associated with watching television. Their highly critical two-volume statement shook the
world of research-psychologists and inspired a flood of thousands of subsequent
investigations that confirmed the early findings, providing a rich bank of research
conclusively documenting the negative effects of exposure to television. Previous
chapters have already mentioned some of these harms – that exposure to modern-day TV
programming and advertisements has been shown to increase one’s alcohol consumption,
increase one’s fast food consumption, lower one’s sense of self-esteem (especially in
young girls) and adversely affect one’s overall health (dramatically increasing the
likelihood that one will become overweight).
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