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Viewing television represents an endless, purposeless, physically unfulfilling activity for a child. Unlike eating until one is full or sleeping until one is no longer tired, watching television has no built-in endpoint. It makes a child want more and more without ever being satisfied.
- Buzzell 1998
We love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist
- Barbara Ehrenreich
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Heavier Users Feel Worse than Light Viewers Generally, and Particularly When Alone or During Unstructured Time. Heavier viewers generally reported enjoying television viewing less and feeling worse during the week than did light viewers (chapter 8). Some subjects reported significantly more negative feelings during both solitary and unstructured time and appear to be especially prone to using television to cope with loneliness, and to provide structure to experience.
Heavier viewing appears to perpetuate itself by causing psychological dependence in those who grow accustomed to having their experience so effortlessly structured. Both relaxation and distraction that television so readily provides leads many viewers to become dependent on the medium.
Television and the Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experience (page 173)
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"THE proposition that television can be addictive is proving to be more than a glib metaphor. The most intensive scientific studies of people's viewing habits are finding that for the most frequent viewers, watching television has many of the marks of a dependency like alcoholism or other addictions."
"For instance, compulsive viewers turn to television for solace when they feel distressed, rather than only watching favorite programs for pleasure. And though they get temporary emotional relief while watching, they end up feeling worse afterward."
- The New York Times (Oct 1990)
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General Tips for Breaking Bad Habits
"I don't feel drawn to abstinence from my gut, but I can name one good reason it works. When you do choose abstinence rather than moderation, you shift from a framework of "how much" behaviors to "yes/no" behaviors. Some behaviors, which I'm calling "how much" behaviors here, demand a small-scale internal debate each time they pop up. Examples include "How much should I eat for breakfast?" and "How much time should I work on my novel today?" The privately conducted debates behind these questions can give you a sense of freedom. Here you get to tinker with how you act, with what you ingest, with what you produce. You can feel liberated from external rules. But the fact is that these "how much" questions also tax us. - Psychology Today Blog (July 2009)
"The bottom line: when you're trying to make a difficult change, save your strength for what matters most. If both a cigarette and candy bar are calling your name, let the candy bar sweet talk you into indulgence. You can kick that habit later." - Psychology Today Blog (July 2009)
 "Like my patient did with her obsession with her boyfriend. Early on, she failed in her attempts to tear her thoughts away from him. So she allowed herself to indulge in fantasies in which they reconciled, but always reminded herself they were exactly that: fantasies. She practiced distracting herself with other things she found genuinely interesting. Gradually she was able to distract herself for longer and longer periods without thinking about him, reminding herself that though he still felt like the most important thing in her life, he clearly wasn't. She knew intellectually that at some point in the future she'd look back over her time with him fondly, without pain. She only needed her emotions to catch up with her intellect. And eventually, she reported almost twelve months later, they did." - Psychology Today Blog (April 2010)
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Everyone talks about the drug problem in our country and, you know, the War on Drugs, but then how come we embrace... even encourage... the use of our most widely abused narcotic. By the age of five, virtually all of our citizens are already addicted to it. Our congressmen and women and Senators allow this drug to guide their debates. You can not go out in public without being exposed to this drug; virtually none of our citizens can bear to be home without using it.
The Moderate Independent (March 2005)
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Boredom
"Encouraging children to entertain themselves in mentally active and imaginative ways and to avoid passive, quick-fix entertainment could also reduce boredom. “We provide children lots of entertainment in the form of television and iPods to prevent them from developing their inner skills to contend with boredom,” Sundberg says. Engaging in active entertainment, such as playing sports or games, is also much more likely to produce flow, Csikszentmihalyi says.
Developing ways to cope with boredom may even help cure other ills. For example, some research hints that if former drug addicts learn to deal effectively with boredom, they are less likely to relapse. In an ongoing study of 156 addicts at a methadone clinic at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, Todman found that the addicts’ reported level of boredom was the only reliable indicator of whether they would stay clean." - Scientific American (Dec 2007)
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Video Games
"A new study concludes that children can become addicted to playing video games, with some skimping on homework, lying about how much they play and struggling, without success, when they try to cut back." - The Washington Post (April 2009) - More on this study - Cognitive Daily (May 2009)
"One type of game -- one of the most popular types, in fact -- hasn't been studied nearly as much as the traditional arcade-style game: massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. One of the studies of this type of game seemed to find that players weren't more aggressive because the games foster cooperation between players."
"But we've also heard -- and seen, with Jim's game-play, that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft can be more engaging and distracting than other games, sucking away hours and hours in seemingly endless online quests. Even if it turns out these games don't promote violent behavior, is it possible that they have other detrimental effects?" - ScienceDaily (June 2008)
"South Korea Imposes Midnight Gaming Ban To Combat Addiction" - The Huffington Post (April 2010)
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