As Seen On TV: Poor Health
Today, with the flick of a thumb (or the pulling of a plug), millions of Americans will initiate one of the most significant public health movements in our history. It’s called National TV-Turnoff Week. More than 3 million people will seize the opportunity to declare freedom from the tube and choose a wide range of other activities that are healthy.
Why is this happening? Why are calls pouring in from parents, principals and pastors to the point that we expect three times as many people to kick the TV habit as did during last year’s TV-Turnoff? A significant factor may be concern about TV violence, which contributes as study after study has shown to real-life mayhem. The Handle But violence is just the tip of the iceberg. In truth, a much broader range of health issues is at stake.
Conventional criticism of television has generally focused on program content. Yet the most critical health issue is not what’s on, but how much the average American watches: four hours per day according to the recent A.C. Nielsen Co. This means you - or someone you know - spends 60 days each year watching TV. By this same measure, the nation’s 190 million adults log 31 million person years of tube time every 12 months.
There is no shortage of research linking all this TV watching to a host of physiological and psychological health problems. The most obvious indicator may be that a third of Americans are obese, up from a quarter in 1980, and many pathologists believe that the single biggest cause is time spent vegetating in front of a TV set. Millions of Americans are so hooked on TV that they show symptoms of substance dependence as defined in the official psychiatric manual. Even more alarming are the studies suggesting that the passive nature of television watching may lead to diminished neural development and brain growth in children.
And what about the effects upon civic health? Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has shown that TV viewing is strongly and negatively related to social trust and group membership; the more people watch, the less they are engaged with others. Less engagement with others is a key ingredient in health. Socially disconnected men and women, research shows, are about three times as likely to die over periods of 5-10 years as are people who maintain many sources of contact.
So why, with evidence like this, does the controversy continue? In part, it’s because television represents a multi-billion dollar industry. Just as tobacco interests are unwilling to admit that cigarettes cause cancer, so are media moguls - and those who advertise on TV - unwilling to admit that watching four hours of TV a day may be bad for our health.
Meanwhile, the TV reform movement, despite its good intentions (or because of them), is sidelined by endless debates about content while the real answer lies in watching less TV, period.
Fortunately, millions of Americans are beginning to recognize this and to take matters into their own hands. Unplugging the TV set this April 24-30 costs nothing, requires no legislation and infringes on nobody’s First Amendment rights. If last year’s Turnoff is any guide, some enthusiasts will cancel their cable subscriptions and give away their sets. Many more will dramatically reduce the amount of television that they watch.
Not every participant will instead volunteer for the soup kitchen, write an opus or lose six pounds (although almost any activity burns more calories than Melrose Place), but they all will spend more time living their own lives and less time watching someone else’s.
Back in the 1960s, this nation embarked on an anti-smoking campaign which included a major public awareness effort on the part of medical associations and citizens’ groups. Three decades later, cigarette smoking is down from 41 percent of Americans to 25 percent. Maybe it’s not so farfetched to think that the same might happen with TV-watching. At the very least, it’s an approach to health care reform that will cost Americans less money, not more. xxxx