By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

In case you missed the special report on MSNBC courageously admitting that watching TV—including MSNBC—is, well, bad for you, I want to reopen the case, as it touches on many of my prior pieces. As a consumer advocate I have long taken issue with the products pushed on TV, as well as what the so-called Entertainment Industry (“The Industry” to insiders) has always referred to as a “product” as well, namely their programs. We literally “consume” what TV has to offer, and, if the sponsors have their way, which history shows to have been very much the case, we consume all the crap they are selling, both internally and externally, as well.

But now research into this insidious beast has uncovered whole new levels of peril. Starting with the least harmful first, people who watch TV tend not to talk to each other. Families sit in silence munching their Papa John’s and staring blankly at the screen. There is no interchange, no conversation (God forbid you should interrupt that cool Quiznos ad!), no wisdom is being shared, in short, no interaction or communication between the Watchers. And you know what that makes those who do such things on a daily, hourly basis? As my stepdaughter would say, “Borrrriiiinng.”

We are becoming a really bored, boring, predictable society. And according to Child Development Magazine, parents who watch TV don't communicate with their kids. And how do we raise and teach them if not by way of communication? We don't. Which leaves the TV in role of parent, and too often, teacher.

Next comes basic structure. If not in our lives, how about the body itself? According to the Journal of Pediatrics, watching TV weakens your bones. Literally, it makes you more and more spineless. It turns out that children store up extra bone for old age by normal exercise and activity while growing up. Unless, of course, they watch a lot of TV and are already couch potatoes. Osteoporosis is preventable at an early age, and also predictable. In a study of 214 children starting at age 3 covering 4 years (to age seven) it was discovered that no matter how much exercise they got outdoors or at school, the more TV they watched, the lower their bone density.

We who are parents have always suspected, possibly based on our own behavior growing up, that too much TV can promote promiscuity among teens. No kidding. Now it turns out it can literally get your girlfriend, or daughter, or somebody, pregnant. It's not just the sexy content of the shows—well, actually, yes it is. Again, according to Pediatrics Magazine, the more TV girls watch the more likely they are to get pregnant. In fact teenage girls who watch a lot of TV are twice as likely to get pregnant as those who don't. Which should settle once and for all the question as to whether watching TV actually influences our behavior. After all, corporate sponsors have been successfully betting on this outcome since TV was invented. And what the heck, there's probably an ad on there somewhere for a home pregnancy kit, just in case. Not for family planning or pregnancy prevention though.

Right alongside unwanted pregnancy, another no-brainer, comes the amazing discovery that getting drunk, especially for girls, can lead to such outcomes as unwanted pregnancies (not to mention date rape). Now the researchers for the journal of Alcohol and Alcoholism are discovering that TV literally gets you drunk. Especially for men, the more TV you watch the more likely you are to reach for another beer. Anybody who's ever watched a Super Bowl is probably a prime candidate for the evidence pool on this issue. Half the ads are for alcohol, and the other half for other stuff that can probably kill you as well, such as junk food and fast cars to drive home in after the game. But anyway, this should be of no surprise to anyone. TV pushes beer like crazy, especially for sports events.

And finally, the ultimate obvious conclusion and realization summing all of it up in one deadly discovery: according to the Journal of the American Heart Association, which has been studying this issue for decades, watching TV can literally kill you. A research study in Australia of 8,800 men and women over a period of six years found that every hour of TV watched per day increased your chances of dying by 11% from any cause, and compared to those who watched less than two hours a day, chronic TV viewers had a 46% greater likelihood of premature death from any cause, and an 80% greater chance of dying from cardiovascular disease. And what was scariest of all was that this fact stood up and held true even with people who were otherwise thin, exercised a lot, didn't smoke, didn't have high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, and ate healthy diets. But hey, that was in Australia, where everything is the opposite of us, right? So relax. And pass me the remote, would you? Oh, and another beer. Thanks for listening.

Sources:

Linda Carroll

MSNBC.com

Child Development Magazine

Journal of Pediatrics

Journal of the American Heart Association

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.