Less Television Equals More Happiness?
The researchers often say that happier people watch less TV, they are more socially active, you see? They have absolutely no time for long hours on their beloved sofas surrounded by junk food.
I suspect this picture is somewhat familiar to a lot of us, suffering from jobless depression.
So, how exactly does television contribute to depression?
– Beautiful people syndrome – aren’t you sick of all these perfect men and women having perfect jobs and perfect children, fantastic holidays and exciting sexual life? TV constantly fuels our lack of self-confidence by making these impossibly high standards of social success.
– Boredom – by overloading our senses with TV we don’t give a chance to our brain to really sort out our interests and preferences in life. Take away our TV sets and we are bored, we lack imagination, patience and have short attention span.
– Fear-mongering – I think Michael Moore said something similar in his “Bowling for Columbine”. The more TV we watch, the more it keeps us in fear. Fear of everything -catastrophes, shootings, stabbings, social fall, break ups, loss of job… Just sit down one evening and note all the negative news and messages you’ve learnt in the course of it – I bet you’d be surprised.
– Sleep deprivation – very common result of too much TV, but we rarely think about it. We sleep less, tire more, and become anxious and depressed.
– Loneliness – our social skills get atrophied, and it’s easier to be depressed on your own that in a company of friends. How sad is that many people don’t even have close friends, but have a TV. It’s deceiving us that we are not alone when in fact if needed we can’t talk to our TV screen, and it won’t offer us its moral support.
– Selfishness – I call it “me syndrome”. People stopped empathising to each other. We are selfish, cold and the world revolves around us, but when we fall – we fall hard, as there is no one to give a helping hand. A lot if it comes from the previous point, – we are losing our people’s skills.
All in all, I think we should get off our backsides, switch off our TVs and go to a neighbouring event to practice our rusty social skills. It will not only help us with our depression, but with our unemployment as well.
