Television as a Drug

Chris Rose comments in the Achorage Daily News that there's actual psychological evidence that TV watching can become an addiction. While others have made this claim with varying degrees of success, Rose's opinion piece serves as a useful warning. Is it something about TV itself? Or does any comforting, repetitive and isolating behavior readily lend itself to addiction (e.g. Internet use, Blackberry messaging, sports)?

Here's the real lesson with broader implications: to be a healthy person you need to engage in a diversity of activities. In this regard, I recall an article from somewhere that established that elderly people who continue to learn new things and engage in a range of activities are less likely to succumb to the memory loss and confusion associated with conditions like Alzheimers. Of course, I've forgotten where I read that, so perhaps I'm actually disproving my own point....

Here's a quote from Rose's op-ed piece, which you can find here.

It's really not too far of a stretch to liken people being "on" TV with people being "on" drugs. In fact, a study by Rutgers psychologist Robert Kubey concludes that millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for "substance dependence" as defined by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Those symptoms include using TV as a sedative; indiscriminate viewing; feeling loss of control while viewing; feeling angry with oneself for watching too much; an inability to stop watching; and feeling miserable when kept from watching.