The Impact of Television

Dear Reader,
How much time, in a typical week, do you invest in watching television?
An hour a day? 5 hours a day? More than that?
According to a 2012 Nielsen study, the average American watches 34 hours of tele
vision per week. 34 hours !!!
As much as I wish I could say that I wasn't among the rest of us in this regard,
until recently, I've been a TV junkie. Just like you probably are.
We could, literally, work another full-time job with just a few more hours!!
Do you get the same return, financial or otherwise from your television viewing
as you do from your non-tv time?
My guess is we actually don't.
So, what is the impact of television:
First, as we've already discussed, time. 34 hours per week, times 52 weeks is an
amazing 1,768 hours each year!
What couldn't you do in 1,768 hours?!
How many times have you said, "I'm so busy", or "I don't have enough time." Why
not? Well, could it be we have made television viewing a higher priority than al
most everything else?
A couple of years ago I watched the entire 180 or so episodes of the show LOST o
n Netflix. They were generally about 42 minutes long. If you are going to watch
shows, services like Netflix are great because you get to skip the 20 or so minu
tes of explicit advertising that you get for watching network television.
I did it in a several month marathon. 4-5 hours a day (sometimes more), for week
s!
It seemed so important, and so meaningful.
We skipped sending Christmas cards that year so I could focus on LOST.
Part of time is the opportunity cost. Opportunity cost, as many of you will be f
amiliar with, is a term from economics that refers to the price of not doing you
r next best opportunity.
Maybe you have a desire to get into shape, or learn a new skill, or just get and
keep the house clean and organized. Some of you may want to pursue spiritual pr
actices, like meditation and prayer. Some of us may be inclined to start a busin
ess.
The truth is if you completely dropped television viewing from your life altoget
her, and thereby reclaimed your 1,800 hours per year, you could do all the above
, and still have time to get caught up on your sleep!
Why do we watch sooo much television?
Is it the high quality content that makes it worth it? Perhaps in some cases. Ho

wever, the vast majority of programming is focused on that which is negative, vi

olent, dysfunctional, and / or pornographic. Do you really want to invest nearly
a third of your life focusing in on that which is violent, dysfunctional, negat
ive, and pornographic?? Really?
Someone close to me would claim that the nightly news was a necessity. 90% of th
e news is "doom and gloom", with weather, sports, and perhaps an "uplifting" sto
ry about someone overcoming some horrible life crisis, and don't forget the comm
ercials.
Some will say I only watch financial shows, or cooking shows, or sports.
So, it's ok, right?
Hmm, let's shelve the topic of sports for another day.
Financial shows - typically make me want to move my money around, and at least f
eel anxious about my investments.
Cooking shows: if the truth be told my cooking skills have increased immeasurabl
y from watching cooking shows. I'm not sure how much it's helped my overall heal
th though.
So, I'm not saying that ALL tv is bad. That it isn't possible to get some value
from it. Consider, wouldn't you learn as much about how to cook if you invested
20 hours reading a really good cook book, or taking a cooking class than in 200
hours watching Restaurant Impossible, or Chopped?
Next point, even the reality type shows are "illusions and lies". What about the
fiction shows. One the top shows in 2014 is Walking Dead, which has been on now
for several seasons. How much actual life enhancing value do we get from watchi
ng clips of how a small group of people copes with surviving in a zombie infeste
d world? Nearly zero.
Perhaps there is case for saying that we get some value in watching the human dy
namics. Or, that, it's a great study of patterns of strategy.
If you already have some models of either how to construct models, or models of
psychology, leadership, relational dynamics or battle strategy, you might be abl
e to gain some further insights.
You almost certainly didn't learn those models from watching cable or Netflix.
Even worse, in most cases, that is simply a justification we tell ourselves, and
we in fact almost never extract useable strategies and philosophies from a tv s
how. When it comes to philosophy, we are luck if we get a paragraph from a 2 hou
r movie.
That isn't what we chat about with our friends or coworkers when we are discussi
ng last nights episode. We talk about the jaw droppers. The adrenaline zinger sc
enes. So, move the benefit of learning or application of models way down the lis
t, cuz it's a lie we use to justify wasting a third of our lives.
Next impact, trauma. We are actually traumatized, generally lightly, but traumat
ized none the less. That trauma creates adrenaline. That adrenaline keeps us str
essed for 5 hours a day! One of the most common reasons people give for watching
TV is to relax. How the heck can you relax while watch any other than what most
would consider totally boring like a symphony or ocean waves or a fire? If you
are one of the view that relax by turning on scenes of tranquil sunsets, congrat
ulations. Otherwise, realize the truth, you aren't really relaxing, you are trau
matizing, and stressing yourself. Aren't you already stressed enough with everyt

hing else?
Furthermore, we spend even more time talking about and thinking about, and even
dreaming about the things we watch. Particularly, those high adrenaline moments.
Those are the slightly traumatizing moments. Our brains have the job of trying
to process those memories.
I think of this as residual trauma.
Generally, what we see on the tv is less traumatizing than the negative events a
nd stressful moments of real life, so we don't generally notice.
Suppose giving a speech, or a job interview is a stressor of a 7 on a scale from
0 -total tranquility, and 10 maximum stressed. Watching a show might rank 1-4.
Comparatively speaking it doesn't feel like stress. It feels like relaxation, bu
t make no mistake about it we are stressing and traumatizing ourselves just at o
r below the threshold for real life stress.
So, what do you do? Give up all TV. That would be a good choice, although for mo
st of us, not realistic.
Stephen Covey recommends in his classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
to limit television viewing to 7 hours per week.
That means you have to be very selective. It also means you have about 28 or so
hours per week to actually make your life great.
To your profound personal development,
Robert Holzhauser