The Dangers of Watching Television & the Internet

[muman613]

I gave up watching Television or Cable almost eight years ago. I do not miss it at all and I think it has increased my health. There is much evidence that watching TV is harmful to a persons health and especially destructive to young minds. I have been advising people to throw their televisions sets out the window {even though I work in the industry} in order to clear their minds of the trash which is broadcast these days.

One study which was announced today indicates that internet usage is just as addictive as most dangerous drugs. Here is a portion of an article which discusses this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57357895-10391704/internet-addiction-changes-brain-similar-to-cocaine-study/

(CBS) Can a person be truly addicted to the Internet?

A new brain scan study shows not only can that be the case, but also that Internet addiction might cause the same brain changes that are seen in alcoholics and drug addicts.

For the study, published in the Jan. 11 issue of PLoS One, researchers studied 17 men and women who were diagnosed with Internet addiction disorder (IAD) and compared scans of their brains to scans of 16 healthy people who weren't addicted to the web. Study participants were between the ages of 14 and 21 and lived in China.

The researchers found more patterns of  "abnormal white matter" on brain scans of Internet addicts, compared with scans of non-addicts. White matter areas in the brain contain nerve fibers that transmit signals to other parts of the brain.

These changes showed evidence of disrupting pathways related to emotions, decision-making, and self control.

The researchers said earlier studies have found similar white matter changes in the brain scans of people addicted to alcohol, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, meth, and ketamine (also known as "Special K").
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And then there are the dangers of television:

http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/dangers-of-television/

The Television Question

Following in their ancestors’ footsteps, traditional Jews guard their hearts, carefully sifting through their generation’s popular culture before allowing it through the front door. Their first question has always been, “How will this affect my children?”

In March 1975, four leading, traditional Jewish scholars issued an advisory warning about television to traditional Jewish communities.(2) Their paper was rooted entirely in Talmudic sources and contained no references to the scientific literature. Nonetheless, it cited what secular scholars would term psychological and developmental dangers. It suggested that these dangers were related to both content and medium, and it recommended that parents not expose their children to television. At the time, the warning must have seemed provincial at best to those unfamiliar with the uncanny insight of traditional Jewish wisdom.

In 1975, television research in secular, academic circles was just beginning. The entire scientific literature consisted of only about 300 research papers and a summary report issued jointly by the United States Surgeon General and the National Institute of Mental Health.(3) The summary report weakly raised the possibility of an association between television watching and aggression, but concluded, “a great deal of research remains to be done before we can have confidence in these conclusions.”

By 1980, investigators had produced 2,500 studies on the effects of watching television, and the Talmudic scholars’ early warning was beginning to look less provincial and more prophetic. In 1982, the National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contracted the leading television researchers—professors from Harvard, Stanford, the University of North Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale—to summarize scientific opinion about television’s safety. Their highly critical two-volume statement(4) failed to gain much attention outside of academic circles, but it shook the world of research-psychologists and inspired a flood of further studies about the dangers of television. Thousands of subsequent investigations confirmed the early findings, and today a rich literature documents the negative outcomes of exposing children to television.
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Five Paths to Cognitive Damage

In the wake of the California surveys, researchers began to ask why exposure to the stimulating and potentially enlightening content of television should retard achievement and IQ. Even more confusing, studies revealed that television reduced educational aspirations. These studies demonstrated that, even though TV programs portrayed an overabundance of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, the more television children watched, the less time they wanted to spend in school. The effect was especially pronounced among adolescents who, as they watched television, lowered not only their educational aspirations but also their professional hopes. The more TV a child watched, the lower status the job he eventually wanted to pursue.(73) Something about the medium seemed to undermine whatever positive content television offered. Five explanations emerged.

First, Harvard investigators confirmed that television ate up time children would otherwise have used to study or read for pleasure. They found, for instance, that children from homes with no television were 11% more likely to do homework on weekdays and 23% more likely to do homework on Sundays.(74) Professor George Comstock of Syracuse University, arguably the leading scholar in the study of television, wrote in 1999, “Learning to read is often hard work for a child, whereas television viewing is comparatively undemanding. Children are certainly tempted to watch television instead of mastering reading, and those who succumb will be permanently impaired scholastically.”(75)

In a spontaneous experiment in 1982, a New Jersey elementary school announced a “No TV Week.” According to the New York Times report of the event, “Students in every class started spending more time reading books and talking to their friends and families.”(76) Two years later the entire city of Farmington, Connecticut voluntarily gave up TV for one month. When Wall Street Journal reporters interviewed Farmington residents, both adults and children most often mentioned reading as the activity they used to fill the newly available hours.(77) Children who do not practice reading find themselves “impaired scholastically,” they do not enjoy school, and, recognizing how much preparatory schooling the elite professions demand, they scale down their aspirations.

A second way that the medium itself depresses achievement and IQ (and perhaps thus aspiration) is by making children sleepy. Not only do children stay up past their bedtimes watching television, a team at Brown University found that children’s sleep onset time was prolonged when they watched television anytime during the previous day or evening, producing shortened sleep duration and daytime sleepiness. The researchers suggested that at bedtime children conjure forth “excessively violent and/or stimulating” television scenes viewed in the last 24 to 48 hours. Thus, even children who went to bed on time were less alert if they had watched television the previous day.(78)
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READ ALL THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF TELEVISION

[angryChineseKahanist]

I dont have this problem. Oh, wait, yes I do.
They beter close this forum then.

[Rubystars]

I'm online about as much as I used to watch tv. I don't know if that's healthy or unhealthy. At least being online is more interactive, I can type on forums or chat rooms with other people or play games rather than just sitting there and absorbing commie brainwashing.

[angryChineseKahanist]

I'm online about as much as I used to watch tv. I don't know if that's healthy or unhealthy. At least being online is more interactive, I can type on forums or chat rooms with other people or play games rather than just sitting there and absorbing commie brainwashing.

Bang! Bulls eye.
You hit the nail right on the head; you shot the commie right between the eyes!

[Rubystars]

Bang! Bulls eye.
You hit the nail right on the head; you shot the commie right between the eyes!

That reminds me of the phrase "Better dead than red!" (Legal Disclaimer: I don't advocate actually shooting people, that could result in a very long prison sentence).

[muman613]

Internet addiction is real... I think we all have it... I work on computers all day and have access to the internet virtually everywhere {including the bathroom}...

[Rubystars]

Internet addiction is real... I think we all have it... I work on computers all day and have access to the internet virtually everywhere {including the bathroom}...

I think it's not really an addiction unless it keeps you from doing other things in your life or takes completely over your life. There have been stories of people who played a video game and took care of their virtual baby and let their real baby starve, for example. Also people who ignored their body's signals for sleep, food, etc. and collapsed in front of their computer. I hope no JTFers would have THAT much of a problem.

[Chai]

Yea well I miss Star Trek.

[cjd]

I don't think that people have to go as far as tossing out the TV but they do need to be a bit selective of what they watch... I gave up watching sitcoms about 30 years ago... I consider them to be about the worst of what is on the dial... I am also very selective with movies and other shows I choose to watch...I never watch anything but the local news on the lower numbers ( basic broadcast)... Networks like CBS, NBC broadcast mostly second rate garbage that anyone with a few brain cells working could do without...There is some good content on the TV people just need the self control to keep away from the junk.

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

Very interesting.