The article “Television addiction is no mere metaphor” by Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlines the definition of television addiction, lists the reasons why TV addiction should be considered as a real phenomenon and describes how people become addicted to television. In its effects on human body and mind television is much like habit-forming drugs – providing relaxation while watching and causing stress when TV is off, thus developing a dependence. Television addiction is deeply ingrained into biological response of human organism while watching TV – the orienting response – largely caused by the form, not the content of TV programs, videos and advertisements. Moreover, television along with computer games and the Internet have a detrimental effect on a social life of an individual and even on his health.
To my mind, the authors are right when stating that television is similar to drugs, because various researches have proven that “watching television has many of the marks of a dependency like alcoholism or other addictions” (Goleman).
The article is based on the authors’ research using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and facts discovered by other scientists. The results provide solid and reasonable ground for the arguments supported by the statements of other researchers. The writers seem to be unbiased, which makes an impression of professionally analyzed facts derived from scientific researches and surveys.
In the course of their research the authors studied people’s behavior and emotions in everyday life and came to a conclusion that people watching TV and reading felt relaxed and passive, however, after TV they felt that “television has somehow absorbed or sucked out their energy, leaving them depleted” (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi). This may be caused by orienting response that is activated by cuts, edits, zooms and sudden noises. It is a way, they say, of capturing people’s attention, however, redundancy of these methods exhaust people. I believe that this is true. Depending on the physical condition, the human mind is in an excited or an inhibited state. The more a person gets tired during the day, the greater is the degree of fatigue of the nervous system. And during the rest together with relaxation of the body and the nervous system relaxes too. The effects of rapid flash, loud sound, followed by a sharp stimulation of the nervous system is rapidly changing by the inhibited state, which is the reason the human mind tents to exhaust so much while watching television. Nevertheless, people watch TV more than they intend even if they feel worse afterwards.
Heavy viewers display different behavior than the light viewers. They say that use TV “to distract themselves from unpleasant thoughts and to fill time” (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi), hence getting away from their problems or boredom. Here, the points of view of researchers divide. The authors believe in the mentioned statement, however, other scientists think that it is TV that makes people “more susceptible to boredom and loneliness” (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi).
To my mind, it is both. Of course, people watch TV when they …