Day 23 - Fight-or-Flight

I've been free of urges to watch TV for 2 weeks now. The elimination of videos & DVD's from my diet has helped enormously. However I do take in copious amounts of radio & internet.

At this watch less TV site they talk about television's stimulation of fight-or-flight reaction through the use of movement on screen by use of scene changes, jump cuts, changes in camera angles and so on. This puts the mind into a passive state where it is waiting to see if it needs to engage the fight-or-flight reaction. Since nothing ever does happen and this reaction is stimulated over and over again, one becomes locked in this passive state, unable to break free. This can also explain the pull TV has even if we are not trying to watch it and engaged in other activities such as conversation.

Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author of Flow) published an article Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor in Scientific American a couple years ago. They describe some effects of TV withdrawal:

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."