A recent study found that the more teenagers watched television, the more likely they would be depressed as adults. The summary of the research is posted in this month's issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. The description of the article reports this conclusion:
"Television exposure and total media exposure in adolescence are associated with increased odds of depressive symptoms in young adulthood, especially in young men."
The LA Times reports that the study found: "... that each additional hour of TV watched per day boosted the odds of becoming depressed by 8%."
It appears that watched videos didn't have much of an effect. I wonder if it wasn't so much watching television, but seeing all the commericals?
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Technorati tags: teenagers, television
2 comments:
I love all these interesting articles you find. Good stuff that is super interesting [smile].
Commercials could be a big part of it. Perhaps, also, it could be the amount consumed. While it is easy to add a few more hours of TV to your life, it is a little more cumbersome to increase your movie consumption.
~Luke
We have had a DVR (TiVo) for over 6 years and are able to watch TV shows (or movies or whatever) and fast forward through commercials.
I think the commericals are a main issue. When visiting relatives, staying at hotels and other times when we have to watch commercials to watch any TV (even news) I find it depressing. Certain shows also have certain depressing topics. Daytime TV like the judge shows my grandmothers watched were filled with victim commercials in ads for lawyers, giving the impressions that people are harmed a lot by just living and to sue is the answer.
Commercials on MTV and other teen show stations that harp on clothing, acne, makeup and so forth tell kids they are ugly and need fixing or should wear X brand.
While watching Oprah about heatlhy eating I see commericals for non-nutritious, fattening processed foods.
Ads for prescription drugs give the impression that many Americans are sick and in need of quick fix drugs and also that many adults are plagued in older years (and in marriage) with s*xual performance issues.
Yes I think sometimes it is the commercials.
Sit coms can teach that life is tidy and can be fixed up and resolved in a 30 or 60 minute segment which means life is messier and harder too.
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