Your mom probably told you that television rots your brain. She was right. Studies have shown a link between children watching television and more aggressive behavior, and other studies have shown a correlation between television viewing and obesity. And a recently completed longitudinal study showed that watching television makes us dumber. Researchers followed a group of young adults who were all around age twenty-five and monitored their viewing habits. Twenty-five years later, the ugly truth was confirmed. People who watched the most television—more than three hours a day—scored the worst on brain tests.
Another study, this of younger children, showed that television viewing was associated with poorer verbal ability. Television viewing has also been shown to disrupt sleep cycles—and the poorer your sleep, the greater your memory and other cognitive problems. For children, concerns include delayed mental development and the increased likelihood of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. People who watch a lot of television also have less social connection with others, and social connection is one of the things that contributes to brain health.
Need more convincing that it’s high time to ditch the satellite dish? Yet another study showed that unhappy people watch the most television. The opposite was true of other activities. For example, for people who liked to read, the more they read, the happier they were. For television watchers, the more they watched, the unhappier they were. In other words, if you want to be happy, dump the television.