A couple weeks ago, I asked a friend how close he thought we were to a time when Americans would get so frustrated with their corrupt and dysfunctional government that they take to the streets with torches. He replied: that won’t happen as long as they’ve got TV. I think my friend has a good point. TV appears to be electronic Soma.

As long as ordinary Americans are glued to the tube, there is little hope that they will be able to focus the requisite attention and energy necessary to fix their government. It’s not that all heavy TV viewers would become active participants in their government if we took away their TVs. As long as they are glued to their hypnotic televisions, though, they won’t be active participants in their own government. As long as American citizens suckle off their television sets, government will be run unabashedly by big corporations.

American citizens don’t seem to be inclined to give up their TV viewing, despite the fact that giving up most of their viewing would free them up to monitor their government and to advocate for needed changes. According to the Nielsen Media Research Study released in September 2006, the average American household watched television more than 8 hours per day during the 2005-2006 television year. Individuals watched an average amount 4 hours and 35 minutes per day To watch TV for 4 ½ hours per day, every day, is virtually the same amount of time many people dedicate to working full time jobs (37.5 hours/week x 50 weeks).

This is an astonishing amount of passive viewing. It’s astonishing because the average television show is so incredibly lacking in quality—if you doubt my broad-brush slander of TV shows, do this experiment: simply turn on your television to a randomly chosen station (other than PBS) and watch for a few minutes. If you happen upon a innocuous looking news program, watch it only after consulting the high quality media criticism provided by the media site links displayed on the home page to Dangerous Intersection. Additional criticism of local newscasts is provided here.

What would we have to gain from giving up most of that television watching? Families will start talking with each other again, according to many anecdotes. Here’s some additional benefits: “better mental clarity, (desired) weight loss, exploring new hobbies, better relationships, more energy, higher productivity, greater emotional stability, and even better sex.” People will knit themselves back into communities. For those viewers who fail to be highly selective, sitting and watching television is one of those modern activities (another is being a sports spectator) that gives the illusion that one is doing something when one is actually doing nothing. As long as one is under the illusion that one is doing something, one will be oblivious to any suggestion that one needs to start doing something.

The statistics are incredibly distressing. TV Turnoff Network presents a sampling of these statistics here. For example:

40% of Americans always or often watch television while eating dinner.

Parents spend an average of 38.5 minutes in meaningful conversation with their children per week.

Ten or more hours of television viewing per week negatively affects academic achievement.

Children under 7 spend 95% of their television-time without their parents.

American children spend 900 hours per year in school, but 1,023 hours watching television.

The average American child sees 200,000 violent acts on TV by age 18. This includes 16,000 murders.

Only 16% of programs show the long-term consequences of violence.

Only 4% of shows emphasize anti-violence themes.

Here’s a recent statistic: America now has more TV’s than people.

Even more distressing, check out this article in Scientific American, “Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor,” by Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The article concludes that many television viewers qualify as “addicts” in every meaningful sense of that term:

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.

Yes, TV helps many people feel relaxed. “Within moments of sitting or lying down and pushing the “power” button, viewers report feeling more relaxed.” But there is a price to pay for this sense of relaxation:

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 . . . [V]iewers’ 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.

The authors report that the longer people sit in front of the TV set, the less satisfaction they said they derived. Heavy viewers generally reports that they enjoyed TV less than light viewers.

This same article got especially interesting when it considered the triggers for these responses. It’s not the content of the programs. Rather, it’s the “stylistic tricks” utilized by producers: the cuts, edits and zooms.

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. The orienting response is overworked. Viewers still attend to the screen, but they feel tired and worn out, with little compensating psychological reward.

The power of these triggers can’t be getting any less in this day and age of wide screen televisions with brilliant colors and full-spectrum sound. Maybe the low quality shows don’t improve in quality when viewed in the state-of-the-art home theater, but watching them does become more compelling.

Human animals are rigged early in life to attend to bright and shiny things such as changes in sounds and images of television shows. Many of us become helpless to turn the set off. Many people can’t even muster the strength to turn the set off in order to get to sleep. Who often wins when it’s a struggle between television use in a couple’s bedroom versus a healthy sex life? The TV.

Heavy viewers have “poorer attentional control” and they use TV “to distract themselves from unpleasant thoughts and to fill time.” Other studies have shown that when cable TV moved into communities, “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.”

When heavy viewers cut back on viewing, they become edgy and dysfunctional. Their nerves become frayed. Television-watching can be viewed as an addiction because “millions of people sense that they cannot readily control the amount of television they watch.” In my experience, most heavy viewers know that they are spending inordinate amounts of time watching TV and they already know they should be attending to other things.What’s the best evidence that television is an addiction?

“Just say no” doesn’t work as advice to heavy viewers. This leaves me with little to say, of course, other than to platitudinous suggestion that we need to keep in mind the addictive power of non-selective television viewing. This suggestion should be made available on TV, but don’t expect it any time soon.