Television Addiction

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert		February 6, 2002

Following is an article about television addiction, from the February
2002 issue of Scientific American.
	
http://www.sciam.com/2002/0202issue/0202kubey.html

Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor
By Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the struggle for survival is how
easily organisms can be harmed by that which they desire. The trout is
caught by the fisherman's lure, the mouse by cheese. But at least those
creatures have the excuse that bait and cheese look like sustenance.
Humans seldom have that consolation. The temptations that can disrupt
their lives are often pure indulgences. No one has to drink alcohol, for
example. Realizing when a diversion has gotten out of control is one of
the great challenges of life.

Excessive cravings do not necessarily involve physical substances.
Gambling can become compulsive; sex can become obsessive. One activity,
however, stands out for its prominence and ubiquity--the world's most
popular leisure pastime, television. Most people admit to having a
love-hate relationship with it. They complain about the "boob tube"and
"couch potatoes," then they settle into their sofas and grab the remote
control. Parents commonly fret about their children's viewing (if not
their own). Even researchers who study TV for a living marvel at the
medium's hold on them personally. Percy Tannenbaum of the University of
California at Berkeley has written: "Among life's more embarrassing
moments have been countless occasions when I am engaged in conversation
in a room while a TV set is on, and I cannot for the life of me stop
from periodically glancing over to the screen. This occurs not only
during dull conversations but during reasonably interesting ones just as
well."

Scientists have been studying the effects of television for decades,
generally focusing on whether watching violence on TV correlates with
being violent in real life [see "The Effects of Observing Violence," by
Leonard Berkowitz; Scientific American, February 1964; and
"Communication and Social Environment," by George Gerbner; September
1972]. Less attention has been paid to the basic allure of the small
screen--the medium, as opposed to the message.

The term "TV addiction" is imprecise and laden with value judgments, but
it captures the essence of a very real phenomenon. Psychologists and
psychiatrists formally define substance dependence as a disorder
characterized by criteria that include spending a great deal of time
using the substance; using it more often than one intends; thinking
about reducing use or making repeated unsuccessful efforts to reduce
use; giving up important social, family or occupational activities to
use it; and reporting withdrawal symptoms when one stops using it.

All these criteria can apply to people who watch a lot of television.
That does not mean that watching television, per se, is problematic.
Television can teach and amuse; it can reach aesthetic heights; it can
provide much needed distraction and escape. The difficulty arises when
people strongly sense that they ought not to watch as much as they do
and yet find themselves strangely unable to reduce their viewing. Some
knowledge of how the medium exerts its pull may help heavy viewers gain
better control over their lives.

A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest

The amount of time people spend watching television is astonishing. On
average, individuals in the industrialized world devote three hours a
day to the pursuit--fully half of their leisure time, and more than on
any single activity save work and sleep. At this rate, someone who lives
to 75 would spend nine years in front of the tube. To some commentators,
this devotion means simply that people enjoy TV and make a conscious
decision to watch it. But if that is the whole story, why do so many
people experience misgivings about how much they view? In Gallup polls
in 1992 and 1999, two out of five adult respondents and seven out of 10
teenagers said they spent too much time watching TV. Other surveys have
consistently shown that roughly 10 percent of adults call themselves TV
addicts.

To study people's reactions to TV, researchers have undertaken
laboratory experiments in which they have monitored the brain waves
(using an electroencephalograph, or EEG), skin resistance or heart rate
of people watching television. To track behavior and emotion in the
normal course of life, as opposed to the artificial conditions of the
lab, we have used the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). Participants
carried a beeper, and we signaled them six to eight times a day, at
random, over the period of a week; whenever they heard the beep, they
wrote down what they were doing and how they were feeling using a
standardized scorecard.

As one might expect, people who were watching TV when we beeped them
reported feeling relaxed and passive. The EEG studies similarly show
less mental stimulation, as measured by alpha brain-wave production,
during viewing than during reading.

What is more surprising is that the sense of relaxation ends when the
set is turned off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness
continue. Survey participants commonly reflect that television has
somehow absorbed or sucked out their energy, leaving them depleted. They
say they have more difficulty concentrating after viewing than before.
In contrast, they rarely indicate such difficulty after reading. After
playing sports or engaging in hobbies, people report improvements in
mood. After watching TV, people's moods are about the same or worse than
before.

Within moments of sitting or lying down and pushing the "power" button,
viewers report feeling more relaxed. Because the relaxation occurs
quickly, people are conditioned to associate viewing with rest and lack
of tension. The association is positively reinforced because viewers
remain relaxed throughout viewing, and it is negatively reinforced via
the stress and dysphoric rumination that occurs once the screen goes
blank again.

Habit-forming drugs work in similar ways. A tranquilizer that leaves the
body rapidly is much more likely to cause dependence than one that
leaves the body slowly, precisely because the user is more aware that
the drug's effects are wearing off. Similarly, viewers' vague learned
sense that they will feel less relaxed if they stop viewing may be a
significant factor in not turning the set off. Viewing begets more
viewing.

Thus, the irony of TV: people watch a great deal longer than they plan
to, even though prolonged viewing is less rewarding. In our ESM studies
the longer people sat in front of the set, the less satisfaction they
said they derived from it. When signaled, heavy viewers (those who
consistently watch more than four hours a day) tended to report on their
ESM sheets that they enjoy TV less than light viewers did (less than two
hours a day). For some, a twinge of unease or guilt that they aren't
doing something more productive may also accompany and depreciate the
enjoyment of prolonged viewing. Researchers in Japan, the U.K. and the
U.S. have found that this guilt occurs much more among middle-class
viewers than among less affluent ones.

Grabbing Your Attention

What is it about TV that has such a hold on us? In part, the attraction
seems to spring from our biological "orienting response." First
described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, the orienting response is our
instinctive visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel stimulus.
It is part of our evolutionary heritage, a built-in sensitivity to
movement and potential predatory threats. Typical orienting reactions
include dilation of the blood vessels to the brain, slowing of the
heart, and constriction of blood vessels to major muscle groups. Alpha
waves are blocked for a few seconds before returning to their baseline
level, which is determined by the general level of mental arousal. The
brain focuses its attention on gathering more information while the rest
of the body quiets.

In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson of the
University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the
simple formal features of television -- cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden
noises -- activate the orienting response, thereby keeping attention on
the screen. By watching how brain waves were affected by formal
features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic tricks can
indeed trigger involuntary responses and "derive their attentional value
through the evolutionary significance of detecting movement.... It is
the form, not the content, of television that is unique."

The orienting response may partly explain common viewer remarks such as:
"If a television is on, I just can't keep my eyes off it," "I don't want
to watch as much as I do, but I can't help it," and "I feel hypnotized
when I watch television." In the years since Reeves and Thorson
published their pioneering work, researchers have delved deeper. Annie
Lang's research team at Indiana University has shown that heart rate
decreases for four to six seconds after an orienting stimulus. In ads,
action sequences and music videos, formal features frequently come at a
rate of one per second, thus activating the orienting response
continuously.

Lang and her colleagues have also investigated whether formal features
affect people's memory of what they have seen. In one of their studies,
participants watched a program and then filled out a score sheet.
Increasing the frequency of edits--defined here as a change from one
camera angle to another in the same visual scene--improved memory
recognition, presumably because it focused attention on the screen.
Increasing the frequency of cuts--changes to a new visual scene--had a
similar effect but only up to a point. If the number of cuts exceeded 10
in two minutes, recognition dropped off sharply.

Producers of educational television for children have found that formal
features can help learning. But increasing the rate of cuts and edits
eventually overloads the brain. Music videos and commercials that use
rapid intercutting of unrelated scenes are designed to hold attention
more than they are to convey information. People may remember the name
of the product or band, but the details of the ad itself float in one
ear and out the other. The orienting response is overworked. Viewers
still attend to the screen, but they feel tired and worn out, with
little compensating psychological reward. Our ESM findings show much the
same thing.

Sometimes the memory of the product is very subtle. Many ads today are
deliberately oblique: they have an engaging story line, but it is hard
to tell what they are trying to sell. Afterward you may not remember the
product consciously. Yet advertisers believe that if they have gotten
your attention, when you later go to the store you will feel better or
more comfortable with a given product because you have a vague
recollection of having heard of it.

The natural attraction to television's sound and light starts very early
in life. Dafna Lemish of Tel Aviv University has described babies at six
to eight weeks attending to television. We have observed slightly older
infants who, when lying on their backs on the floor, crane their necks
around 180 degrees to catch what light through yonder window breaks.
This inclination suggests how deeply rooted the orienting response is.

"TV Is Part of Them"

That said, we need to be careful about overreacting. Little evidence
suggests that adults or children should stop watching TV altogether. The
problems come from heavy or prolonged viewing.

The Experience Sampling Method permitted us to look closely at most
every domain of everyday life: working, eating, reading, talking to
friends, playing a sport, and so on. We wondered whether heavy viewers
might experience life differently than light viewers do. Do they dislike
being with people more? Are they more alienated from work? What we found
nearly leaped off the page at us. Heavy viewers report feeling
significantly more anxious and less happy than light viewers do in
unstructured situations, such as doing nothing, daydreaming or waiting
in line. The difference widens when the viewer is alone.

Subsequently, Robert D. McIlwraith of the University of Manitoba
extensively studied those who called themselves TV addicts on surveys.
On a measure called the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (SIPI), he
found that the self-described addicts are more easily bored and
distracted and have poorer attentional control than the nonaddicts. The
addicts said they used TV to distract themselves from unpleasant
thoughts and to fill time. Other studies over the years have shown that
heavy viewers are less likely to participate in community activities and
sports and are more likely to be obese than moderate viewers or
nonviewers.

The question that naturally arises is: In which direction does the
correlation go? Do people turn to TV because of boredom and loneliness,
or does TV viewing make people more susceptible to boredom and
loneliness? We and most other researchers argue that the former is
generally the case, but it is not a simple case of either/or. Jerome L.
and Dorothy Singer of Yale University, among others, have suggested that
more viewing may contribute to a shorter attention span, diminished
self-restraint and less patience with the normal delays of daily life.
More than 25 years ago psychologist Tannis M. MacBeth Williams of the
University of British Columbia studied a mountain community that had no
television until cable finally arrived. Over time, both adults and
children in the town became less creative in problem solving, less able
to persevere at tasks, and less tolerant of unstructured time.

To some researchers, the most convincing parallel between TV and
addictive drugs is that people experience withdrawal symptoms when they
cut back on viewing. Nearly 40 years ago Gary A. Steiner of the
University of Chicago collected fascinating individual accounts of
families whose set had broken--this back in the days when households
generally had only one set: "The family walked around like a chicken
without a head." "It was terrible. We did nothing--my husband and I
talked." "Screamed constantly. Children bothered me, and my nerves were
on edge. Tried to interest them in games, but impossible. TV is part of
them."

In experiments, families have volunteered or been paid to stop viewing,
typically for a week or a month. Many could not complete the period of
abstinence. Some fought, verbally and physically. Anecdotal reports from
some families that have tried the annual "TV turn-off" week in the U.S.
tell a similar story.

If a family has been spending the lion's share of its free time watching
television, reconfiguring itself around a new set of activities is no
easy task. Of course, that does not mean it cannot be done or that all
families implode when deprived of their set. In a review of these
cold-turkey studies, Charles Winick of the City University of New York
concluded: "The first three or four days for most persons were the
worst, even in many homes where viewing was minimal and where there were
other ongoing activities. In over half of all the households, during
these first few days of loss, the regular routines were disrupted,
family members had difficulties in dealing with the newly available
time, anxiety and aggressions were expressed.... People living alone
tended to be bored and irritated.... By the second week, a move toward
adaptation to the situation was common." Unfortunately, researchers have
yet to flesh out these anecdotes; no one has systematically gathered
statistics on the prevalence of these withdrawal symptoms.

Even though TV does seem to meet the criteria for substance dependence,
not all researchers would go so far as to call TV addictive. McIlwraith
said in 1998 that "displacement of other activities by television may be
socially significant but still fall short of the clinical requirement of
significant impairment." He argued that a new category of "TV addiction"
may not be necessary if heavy viewing stems from conditions such as
depression and social phobia. Nevertheless, whether or not we formally
diagnose someone as TV-dependent, millions of people sense that they
cannot readily control the amount of television they watch.

Slave to the Computer Screen

Although much less research has been done on video games and computer
use, the same principles often apply. The games offer escape and
distraction; players quickly learn that they feel better when playing;
and so a kind of reinforcement loop develops. The obvious difference
from television, however, is the interactivity. Many video and computer
games minutely increase in difficulty along with the increasing ability
of the player. One can search for months to find another tennis or chess
player of comparable ability, but programmed games can immediately
provide a near-perfect match of challenge to skill. They offer the
psychic pleasure--what one of us (Csikszentmihalyi) has called "flow"--
that accompanies increased mastery of most any human endeavor. On the
other hand, prolonged activation of the orienting response can wear
players out. Kids report feeling tired, dizzy and nauseated after long
sessions.

In 1997, in the most extreme medium-effects case on record, 700 Japanese
children were rushed to the hospital, many suffering from "optically
stimulated epileptic seizures" caused by viewing bright flashing lights
in a Pokémon video game broadcast on Japanese TV. Seizures and other
untoward effects of video games are significant enough that software
companies and platform manufacturers now routinely include warnings in
their instruction booklets. Parents have reported to us that rapid
movement on the screen has caused motion sickness in their young
children after just 15 minutes of play. Many youngsters, lacking
self-control and experience (and often supervision), continue to play
despite these symptoms.

Lang and Shyam Sundar of Pennsylvania State University have been
studying how people respond to Web sites. Sundar has shown people
multiple versions of the same Web page, identical except for the number
of links. Users reported that more links conferred a greater sense of
control and engagement. At some point, however, the number of links
reached saturation, and adding more of them simply turned people off. As
with video games, the ability of Web sites to hold the user's attention
seems to depend less on formal features than on interactivity.

For growing numbers of people, the life they lead online may often seem
more important, more immediate and more intense than the life they lead
face-to-face. Maintaining control over one's media habits is more of a
challenge today than it has ever been. TV sets and computers are
everywhere. But the small screen and the Internet need not interfere
with the quality of the rest of one's life. In its easy provision of
relaxation and escape, television can be beneficial in limited doses.
Yet when the habit interferes with the ability to grow, to learn new
things, to lead an active life, then it does constitute a kind of
dependence and should be taken seriously.

<----article ends here----->

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