TV And Depression

Wouldn’t it be fun to just sit in front of the TV all day and watch your favorite shows?

Actually, it’s pretty darn depressing.  Anyway, that’s what I have noticed, and now it’s official.

I cannot begin to guess the number of people I have diagnosed as depressed who watch television all day.  I’ve noticed it for a long time, and part of my standard examination is to find out what people do with their daily lives.

Short answer – couch potato.

Most of the time these folks aren’t actually trying to change their lives or get better.  This isn’t just a simple, “Oh, I gotta catch Jerry Springer!” or “Oprah is supposed to be good today!”

No – I am talking about people who do so much television watching that they cannot count the hours.  They give excuses like lack of money for not leaving their homes except rarely to get food.  They either have few relatives or friends or have become so disagreeable nobody can tolerate visiting them.  Sometimes social isolation has been a previous decision. 

I mean, there are people who live in shacks in the middle of the California desert, and some who still use something that sounds like rabbit ears or an old-school TV antenna on the roof to get reception.

When I ask these people what their favorite television show is, they rarely have one. Usually, there is more of the notion that their loneliness is increased when the TV is not on. 

Sometimes there is even something that resembles addiction.  The TV cannot be turned off because the next thing that happens has to be seen or heard. Things are missed, sometimes, by falling asleep in front of the TV.  It is their central part of life, it has substituted for social contact, for goals, for life fulfillment.

I knew the study cited above was the tip of the iceberg. For a lot of people, TV has become an almost complete surrogate for life.  It cannot be good.

I looked for more about television that would describe some of what I was hearing, some of what was going on.  I mean, as for me, I have sometimes  watched TV for a couple of days, — usually after some kind of state of exhaustion — but after that, I am doing things, because I cannot stand to be without doing things.

I found an impressive compendium, surely, but a total mish-mash — not all things I hear regularly. And certainly, not the things I see.  I see people who are depressed and television associated who cannot wait to finish the interview and get home where they are “safe,” even if it is boring. 

I have the feeling there is something very wrong.  These people are detached, and it did not start in two minutes of watching television.  Sometimes it has taken twenty years of television viewing.

These people seem to me to somehow have “dumbed-down” from their previous jobs, educations, and social functions.

Speaking of education, I found out about “Channel One” — the special classroom network on closed-circuit TV for teens.  That’s right, kids can watch TV at school.

Now why would a company dedicate its resources to providing in-school TV?  Hmmm?  Could they be up to something?

I certainly wasn’t the only one suspicious of Channel One’s motives.  They have been pretty heavily criticized – not only for their “news” content, but because of their commercials.

One notion you pick up pretty early in psychiatric training is variously called “agenda” or “meta-message.”  It is the reason we all have trouble believing somebody who says “don’t do what I do — do what I say.”  It is the science of not what someone is saying, word by word, but the real message they are transmitting — the thing that the recipient of that message may be picking up, even if they do not know they are.

“Other people fix things for you.”

“Don’t think, just do.”

And its corollary — “It is okay to get addicted.”

These things have tremendous effects on young folks, staring at the tube in a hypnosis like state.

Now I have read a few books about media; especially Neal Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business “(1985), an amazing work about the addictive qualities of television news.  For example, he explains that you feel you have to come back after the commercial to see what happens next, because you are “hooked” — not because it actually makes any difference.

If you are interested, it is available as a free audiobook – you only have to click and download.

Now the meta-message that hit me between the eyes was “Eat Now.”  I thought of every fast food commercial past or present that I could remember.  From food premiums to kids sinking what must still have been their birth set of teeth into such succulent hamburgers they looked good even to me.  From meats to treats and candies, this was it.  Eat and you will be happy; and eat and life will be better.

Me, except for occasionally killing time in hotel rooms, I do not watch commercial television very much and have not for a few years.

Suddenly, reading the articles to which I have linked here, an insight came to me, one of those times that I feel a little light go on, as if I may have accidentally nicked eternal truth somewhere around the edges.

Advertising works great and it works because it plays on expectations, not on reality.  The car that helps the guy get the girl, or the toothpaste, or deodorant that does the same.

The food that makes the kid happy.  We should know by now that childhood is not idyllic.  It moves from checking under the bed before going to sleep every night to see if there is a monster, to being or not being popular “enough” in high school. 

And graphic, well-tested well-financed images of kids whose lives have been made happier by fast food!  A full frontal lie promising to help with the anguishes of childhood.  I cannot think of anything more satisfying to a kid with the normal everyday stresses of kid-ness.

Now, in my never ending search for truth — a question.  Why, when we first started worrying about how cigarettes were able to kill people, did we start putting warning labels on the packages and advertising?  Here is a product intended only for adults, who are supposed to be able to make up their own minds with adequate information.

Children are still learning.  At least I hope they are learning; maybe God knows if they are ever taught anything about critical thinking in school, for I cannot remember having ever seen any evidence that they are.

We have moneyed-interests — large ones — that are actively working against that kind of learning, in order to make more money.

We need to regulate the advertisement and labeling for fast food, so that it is clear to all, especially the young, that this is not just a rapidly reinforced, immediate gratification way to get happiness.  I have seen absolutely nothing I can think of in any fast food commercial to suggest otherwise.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we are the most anxious and the most depressed nation on earth. We are probably the most obese, too.  We cannot lie back and accept this as part of the “advancement” of civilization, because it is not and should not be.

Regulating things that are already going on is a weak move but a necessary and temporary one.  Necessary until we substitute real values for mass media values, something I believe enough in the human race to say that we can and will.