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- A recent Australian study showing that an average four-month-old watches TV for 44 minutes per day.
- In the UK, TV tops the list of leisure activities and in the US the average person watches 4-7 hours a day.
- Overweight children are more likely to watch television, which in turn decreases their physical activity and increases snacking.
- Studies have found a positive correlations between watching violence on TV and committing acts of real-life violence.
- TV, with its quick cuts and barrage of images has been shown to reduce one’s attention span and capacity to learn.
Are you a television addict?
Television’s influence on our beliefs is explored in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty Four in which TV viewing is compulsory and in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in which wall-size TVs replace banned books. Their prophetic observation is that TV is a powerful propaganda tool telling us what to buy, how to look, how to act, whom to emulate and what to think. The method is repetition — who can forget the Gilligan’s Island theme or the plane crashing into the twin towers? The content is determined by what keeps viewers watching rather than what will enlighten or assist them. Hence, violent crime stories are network favourites, feeding adults’ hunger for drama and fuelling children’s fears.
Biased coverage means the news screens stories, showing those that suit their agenda and often censoring issues such as war to fit the image they want to present. TV’s main motivation is to foster “affluenza”, or blind consumerism, as evidenced by research revealing that every hour spent watching TV creates an average annual expenditure increase of $US333.
Our view of success is also governed by TV’s sanitised reality, leading to the “beautiful people syndrome”, whereby some of us feel we are inadequate failures compared with glamorised TV characters. Author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Professor Neil Postman, alerts readers to TV’s pervasive influence: “Television has become the background radiation of the social and intellectual universe, we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge and reality.”
Tele tubbies
"We are raising the most overweight generation of youngsters in American history ... This week is about saving lives." — US Surgeon General Dr David Satcher at the onset of TV-Turnoff Week 2001.
Overweight children are more likely to watch television, which in turn decreases their physical activity and increases snacking. The rise in childhood obesity and the associated type 2 diabetes is alarming health professionals and parents. A recent report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) found 18 per cent of boys and 22 per cent of girls are overweight or obese, a level that has doubled over the past 10 years.
Exposed to more than 40,000 ads per year, children are targeted by junkfood companies as a lucrative market. According to Australia’s ADGP Junk Food Advertising Audit in January 2003, a child watching four hours of television per day over the six-week holiday period will see a total of 649 junkfood ads, including 404 advertisements for fast food, 135 for soft drinks and 44 for icecream.
Other health hazards posed by television are myopia and headaches. Sitting closer than three metres from the television and being in a dark room increase the risk of eyestrain and x-ray exposure, which contributes to headaches. Ideally, there should be soft lighting and at least three metres between the viewer and screen.
Anyone who favours sedentary pursuits over physical activity is increasing their risk of obesity, musculo-skeletal problems and poor circulation. Lethargy and lowered alertness induced by television appear to endure even after watching it. As my sister remarked, “I turn it on to unwind but it seems to drain all my energy.” Ultimately, the passive, voyeuristic nature of television discourages participation in life, fostering the philosophy that life is a spectator sport in which sitting on the sidelines is sufficient.
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