Insight

Television

Television has been the dominant medium of mass communication for more than 50 years. TV is so pervasive and influential that it defines our culture.

Not only does television directly sell us products through advertising, it also sells us a certain lifestyle and reality through its programming. Television tells us what’s “normal,” what’s “acceptable,” and what’s “true.”

TV truly is a medium of “programming”–in which images, ideas, and values are directly inserted into the viewer’s brain with almost no active involvement on their part. Studies have shown that a television viewer’s brain activity switches from left to right side–corresponding to a shift from conscious, rational thought to a more primal, emotional state.

Television also causes a release of endorphins in the viewer’s brain, giving a sensation of pleasure and likely a cause of widespread TV addiction.

While television may seem to be a harmless part of modern society, its effects on our brains and our culture have been profound and generally harmful, alienating, and dehumanizing.

The frequencies or airwaves which carry TV signals were originally intended to owned by the public and utilized for the public good. But as with most resources, they have been sold out to profiteers and used to perpetuate greed and debasement.

Because of its market saturation and its close emulation of reality through sound and picture, television is probably the most powerful media in existence. As purveyors of truth, we should work to reclaim the television medium from corporations and government.

Television Statistics:

  • Percentage of households that possess at least one television: 99

  • Number of TV sets in the average U.S. household: 2.24

  • TV distorts reality by exaggerating and over-representing violence, sex, gender and racial stereotypes, etc. These effects are especially influential on children.

  • Research shows that television viewing lowers left brain function–logic and conscious/critical thought. TV actually induces a trance like state in the brain associated with alpha waves and the right brain–similar to meditation or sleep. In this state, the brain is totally susceptible and unconscious to the images and messages that TV delivers. This truly is programming or “brainwashing.”

  • Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes

  • Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66

  • Number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans: 250 billion