It is one of the most important aspects
of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the
international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three
global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.
The key role played by these agencies
means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same
wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services
use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages
around the world.
A study of the Syria war coverage by
nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78%
of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0%
on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and
interviews were in favor of a US and NATO intervention, while propaganda
was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.
Introduction: “Something strange”
“How does the newspaper know what it
knows?” The answer to this question is likely to surprise some newspaper
readers: “The main source of information is stories from news agencies.
The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to
world events. So what are the names of these agencies, how do they work
and who finances them? To judge how well one is informed about events in
East and West, one should know the answers to these questions.” (Höhne
1977, p. 11)
A Swiss media researcher points out:
“The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass
media. No daily media outlet can manage without them. () So the news
agencies influence our image of the world; above all, we get to know
what they have selected.” (Blum 1995, p. 9)
In view of their essential importance,
it is all the more astonishing that these agencies are hardly known to
the public: “A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist
at all … In fact, they play an enormously important role in the media
market. But despite this great importance, little attention has been
paid to them in the past.” (Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p. 13)
Even the head of a news agency noted:
“There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known
to the public. Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the
spotlight, yet they can always be found at the source of the story.”
(Segbers 2007, p. 9) More
It’s been a long wait, but a Disney heroine finally has a girlfriend… and it’s not Elsa. Months after The Rise of Skywalkerfeatured the first same-sex kiss in the Star Wars galaxy, the new animated film Onward
introduces the first self-identified lesbian character into the
Disney-Pixar universe. Her name is Officer Specter, and she’s a Cyclops
cop voiced by openly gay screenwriter and actress Lena Waithe. While
Specter’s inclusion in Onward is a major first for Disney, it’s
treated almost matter-of-factly in the movie itself, which the
filmmakers say is by design. “It just kind of happened,” Onward producer
Kori Rae tells Yahoo Entertainment. “The scene, when we wrote it, was
kind of fitting and it opens up the world a little bit, and that’s what
we wanted.” Adds director Dan Scanlon, “It’s a modern fantasy world and
we want to represent the modern world.”
Specter only appears in one scene in Onward,
which opens in theaters on March 6, but her role is vital to the
emotional arc of the story. Written by Scanlon, Jason Headley and Keith
Bunin, the film takes places in a magical universe whose fantastical
citizens — think elves, dragons and manticores — have lost their
connection to the magical arts. Onward’s heroes are two elven
brothers, Ian and Barley (Tom Holland and Chris Pratt), who lost their
father at a young age before either had a chance to properly say
goodbye. On Ian’s 16th birthday, their mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)
hands them a present left behind by dearly departed dad, which turns out
to be a 24-hour resurrection spell. Due to their limited experience
with magic, the spell immediately goes haywire, forcing the duo to
embark on a ticking-clock quest to find a replacement element before
their father vanishes again. Meanwhile, Mom and her new boyfriend,
centaur cop Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez), try to catch up with the boys
to protect them from a curse that their mission threatens to unleash.
The Disney Channel will premiere a new cartoon – The Owl House – on Friday, January 10, that promises to introduce young viewers to a world of demons and witchcraft.
According to Disney, “The series follows self-assured teenage girl Luz, who discovers a portal to another realm where humans are not well-liked, and she must disguise herself in order to fit in at witch school.”
Disney describes that realm as a “Demon town,” where Luz takes up residence with Eda the Owl Lady, “the most powerful witch on the Boiling Iles.”
Luz declares, “Someday, I’m going to be just like her.”
“The original pitch (for the show) was ‘girl hangs out with witch in hell,’” voice actor Alex Hirsch told Newsweek.com.
The show’s art director, Ricky Cometa, explained
that when the show’s creator, Dana Terrace, first approached him, “she
said that ‘we're trying to make this demon realm a part of Disney.’”'
“We really wanted to make this demon realm feel like home, and just had to figure out how to do it," said Cometa.
The writers room for the show is “full of books on witchcraft,
witches and spells to take inspiration from,” according to the Newsweek
piece.
The visual design of the show is inspired by various European
painters such as Hieronymus Bosch, who was best known for his
surrealistic depictions of hell.
Show creator Terrace, who first became acquainted with religious
painters while growing up in Catholic school, said Bosch’s twisted takes
on angels and demons would make for a “cool show in that art style.”
Last month, controversy arose
over when major retailers such as Walmart, Amazon, and Barnes &
Noble offered a book inviting young children to learn how to summon
demons.
Written for 5- to 10-year-olds, A Children’s Book of Demons directs kids to “conjure gentle demons by writing their sigils, which serve as ‘a phone number’ straight to the spirit.”
“As ridiculous as the ‘demons’ contained in the book may be, there is
nothing innocent or fun about even pretending to summon evil spirits,”
noted Elizabeth Johnston, aka Activist Mommy, on her blog. “But who is to say it is pretend? The spirit world is real and is no laughing matter.”
“It is a sign of the degeneration of our society that making use of
demons is considered acceptable, and it manifests ignorance of their
malice and desire to do us harm,” renowned exorcist, Fr. Chad Ripperger,
told LifeSiteNews. “Books such as these ought to be avoided by parents
and children, as they pose a possible opening to demons’ influence in
their lives, which will only end in affliction and suffering.”
“Parents would be well warned that it is not something ‘silly,’ but
contrary to the proper formation of their children,” he continued.
“Opening up children to this at a young age will often place the child
in a mindset that diabolic influence of demons in his life is not
something serious or to be avoided.”
Why do you believe what you believe? Some people have a really solid
answer to that question, but much of the population never thinks much
about deeper questions such as this. In fact, for most Americans it is
simply easier to let others do their thinking for them. Today, most of
us spend multiple hours each day absorbing information through a screen,
and most of the content that is fed to us through our televisions,
phones, tablets and computers is controlled by the elite. And if you
allow anyone to feed information into your mind for several hours every
day, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you view the world.
When I was younger, one of my favorite movies was “The Matrix”, and I
think that it is a really good metaphor for what is going on in our
society today. In the film, nearly the entire human population was
plugged into a system which continuously fed a computer-generated
reality into their minds that wasn’t real at all. Later on, I
eventually came to realize that we are willingly doing the same thing to
ourselves. Our personal interactions with one another are extremely
limited, but we willingly “plug in” to the enormous matrix of news,
information and entertainment that the elite have constructed for many
hours each day.
According to numbers that were released earlier this year, the average American spends more than three hours watching television and more than three hours on mobile devices every single day…
If Americans from previous generations could visit our society right
now, they would probably be horrified that we are all constantly staring
at our screens like some sort of zombies.
And perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if we were feeding our minds
healthy things, but instead most of what we are absorbing is garbage
that has been produced by the elite. More..
“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and
breed, their other activities were without importance… Films, football,
beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To
keep them in control was not difficult.” ~ George Orwell, 1984
Few things in American culture exemplify the fractured status of the
collective psyche quite like the popularity of the National Football
League (NFL). The NFL has become a de facto symbol of American freedom,
while in reality it performs the function of the Roman circus, keeping
the distracted from the extortion and crimes of state.
The NFL is sponsored by major corporations and by the U.S. Armed Forces.
The games played in multi-billion dollar subsidized stadiums have
become patriotically charged events, where spectators conflate fighting
for freedom with watching games for entertainment. Men are told to pick a
team and go to war for that team. Fans of different teams are mortal
enemies. Military planes conduct fly-bys overhead, and participants are
apparently expected to stand for the national anthem.
The euphoria of football has political value. The sport is an
important program of deflection and subjugation of the natural male will
to protect community and to fight against foe if necessary. This
natural drive is captured and projected onto the tightly controlled
images of the league, its teams, and its players. Games are presented as
life and death struggles, while real-life issues are downplayed in
favor of this never-ending drama.
Author William Cooper talked about the importance of football and
other major league sports in a society where men must be pacified in
order for the government to continually abuse the populace. Cooper’s
perspective is that such enormous investment in the sport as a national
pastime serves to distract the people from important social issues,
deflecting blame away from the oligarchy for it’s contributions in
destroying real freedom. When men’s passions are levied on sport, they
pay little attention to the workings of the state, and have no gumption
to resist creeping tyranny.
“What
does the emperor do when the people have become restive, and when the
people are asking questions, or when the people don’t like the policies
of the emperor? He sends them to the circus. He creates a circus. He
builds a giant coliseum and he begins to throw the Christians to the
lions, and he has great chariot races, and football games, and
basketball games. All to keep the idiots preoccupied with things that
don’t mean anything in the scheme of the entire world. So that they
don’t have the time to learn what the truth is, so that they don’t ever
get smart enough to learn how they’re being manipulated. So that they
don’t ever question the emperor.” ~William Cooper
“When a hundred and fifty of the most powerful men and
women in the world can meet in secret… to plot the fate of billions, and
nobody even cares about it, but six football players go to lunch
together, and it’s in the headlines across the country, you have a
reflection of the society in which that exists. And it is a sick, sick
society that is doomed to self-destruction.” ~William Cooper
And now, as ‘take a knee‘
protests have swept the nation, the NFL’s image has just been shattered
in a catch-22 of brainwashing and cognitive dissonance. What originally
started as a statement against the very real and destructive issue of police brutality
has become a hysteria-fueled social movement and front page news.
People are destroying thousands of dollars worth of team branded
merchandise to demonstrate that complaints against the state will not be
tolerated.
Now, the president has even chimed in,
adding fuel to the fire and doubling down on the notion that the
National Football League is first and foremost a patriotic organization.
In this country, and in this sport, the government is not to be
criticized. Not for brutalizing the citizenry with out of control
police, or anything else.
Final Thoughts
In a society as rigidly controlled by a monolithic, top-down,
know-it-all organization like the state, the archetypal energy of the
male is manageable only by suppressing man’s natural drive to protect
his community. This is how the elite have controlled men since the days
of the Roman Empire.
When President Eisenhower left office,
he warned us that the U.S. was changing under the pressures of a new
world, and that a military industrial complex had emerged which would
pose a sincere menace to a free society. Fast forward almost 60 years
and his words are quite prescient.
“Now this conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American
experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is
felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal
government.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of
this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We
should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable
citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and
military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so
that security and liberty may prosper together.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower Walking Times
UPDATE: Brzezinski took to Twitter to clarify her remarks, saying,
“Today I said it’s the media’s job to keep President Trump from making
up his own facts, NOT that it’s our job to control what people think.”
She added, “Of course, that is obvious from the transcript but some people want to make up their own facts. SAD!”
On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika
Brzezinski stated President Trump “could have undermined the messaging
so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that
is our job.”
Brzezinski said, “I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here
are that he’s is trying to undermine the media, trying to make up his
own facts. And it could be that, while unemployment and the economy
worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can
actually control exactly what people think. And that is our job.”Breitbart
Samsung has confirmed that its "smart TV" sets are listening to customers' every word, and the company is warning customers not to speak about personal information while near the TV sets.
The company revealed that the voice activation feature on its smart
TVs will capture all nearby conversations. The TV sets can share the
information, including sensitive data, with Samsung as well as
third-party services. The Week
One of the biggest makers of smart televisions has been found to be tracking users' viewing habits without them knowing.
Vizio has been fined $2.2 million (£1.8m) after the US
consumer watchdog discovered the company had been using content
recognition software to track viewers without asking for permission.
The tracking technology, called automated content recognition, can
recognise what is being watched on the television at any given moment.
Vizio gathered "as many as 100 billion data points a day from millions
of TVs".
Vizio, which has sold more than 11 million smart TVs since 2010, was
found to have been sharing the "mountain of data" with independent
companies such as advertisers and those that monitor audience engagement
and habits. It does not sell its TVs in the UK.
"Consumers didn't know that while they were watching their TVs, Vizio
was watching them," the US Federal Trade Commission said. "The generic
way the company described that feature – for example, 'enables program
offers and suggestions' – didn’t give consumers the necessary heads-up
to know that Vizio was tracking their TV’s every flicker." Telegraph
Nickelodeon is making history by introducing a same-sex married couple in one of its cartoons for the first time.
The couple will appear in a July 20 episode of popular children’s show
“The Loud House,” which is about a kid named Lincoln growing up as the
only boy in a family with ten sisters.
In Wednesday’s episode, “Overnight Success,” Lincoln, invites his best friend, Clyde McBride, over for a sleepover, Buzzfeed reports.
When Clyde arrives, Lincoln announces, “Time to make history!” and then
opens the door to his friend standing in the doorway with his two dads,
who are doubly-as-diverse as an interracial couple, Howard and Harold
McBride. NYDailyNews
Lorena Blas, USA TODAY Life 10:44 a.m. EST January 31, 2016 Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) brings a different kind of devilish character to television. Fox's Lucifer (Mondays,
9 ET/PT) gives us a charming demonic dude who takes up residence in Los
Angeles as a nightclub owner. Of course, he's quite the ladies' man,
and well, he doesn't want to go back to hell, where his father wants
him.
What’s next? Will the son of Satan walk among us? Oh wait, that's Damien, coming to A&E March 7.
But the Devil isn't new to the small screen. USA TODAY takes a look at other recent TV devils.
Lucifer (Supernatural, CW, Wednesdays, 9 ET/PT)
Lucifer has had multiple faces on the drama series, which started in 2005. In most of his appearances, he's portrayed by Mark Pellegrino. But if you follow the show, you know this baddie also inhabited the characters played by Jared Padalecki and more recently, Misha Collins. It's a devil of a headache to follow.
Super Devil (Family Guy, Fox, Sundays, 9 ET/PT)
Super Devil's appearance in Season 5 of the animated series is the
stuff of legend. He's got red skin, ram's horns, a flying motorcycle
and a jar of marmalade that forces people to commit adultery.
Ultimately, he's killed by Brian, the dog, randomly firing a revolver.
Devil Flanders (The Simpsons, Fox, Sundays, 8 ET/PT)
Devil Flanders on the long-running Fox animated series is Simpsons neighbor Ned Flanders,
transformed into Satan. One day, when Homer is out of doughnuts at
work, he mutters something about being willing to sell his soul for a
doughnut. So Devil Flanders strikes a deal with Homer, who thinks he
can get out of the deal by not finishing it. Well, complications ensue
and after a trial, Marge wins ownership of Homer's soul, beating the
devil. Devil Flanders also appears on several "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween episodes.
Satan (South Park, Comedy Central)
The animated comedy series has its own demonic spirit. Satan, who here
is openly gay, occasionally rises from Hell to South Park to carry out
wicked deeds, but he's not completely without compassion. He's had
relationships with Saddam Hussein and more recently, Chris. And he has a son named (what else?) Damien.
If late radio legend Paul Harvey were around to update his famous commentary
“If I were the Devil,” he might include on his demonic to-do list,
“portray Satan as a nice fellow.” Because this is precisely what the Fox
network is doing in its new series Lucifer, set to premiere January 25.
Starring actor Tom Ellis as Lucifer, reviewer Valerie David writes
that he is a “Brit-accented rogue helping humans while being harassed
by angels” and that the show is “redemption for the Devil.” Deadline.com
presents the storyline, reporting,
“The series follow the story of the original fallen angel. Bored and
unhappy as the Lord of Hell, Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) has
abandoned his throne and retired to LA, where he owns Lux, an upscale
nightclub. Charming, charismatic and devilishly handsome, Lucifer is
enjoying his retirement, indulging in a few of his favorite things —
wine, women and song — when a beautiful pop star is brutally murdered
outside of Lux.” One thing leads to another, and Lucifer ends up helping
the police solve crimes and working on the side of justice.
Not surprisingly, the show has inspired protests. The organization
One Million Moms launched a petition urging Fox to scuttle the series, writing that it glorifies “Satan as a caring, likable person in human flesh.” And Natural News’ Ethan A. Huff minced no words, telling us,
“The Lucifer character will be offered up to the masses who watch Fox
as a likable character with moral and ethical convictions, fulfilling
the biblical account of this insidious demonic entity.... It's only
fitting, then, that this modern-day show produced by satanists [sic]
would portray Lucifer as a type of benevolent god, since this was always
his goal — to take the place of the real God. Whether you believe what
the Bible says or not, this is the clear-as-day implication of this
upcoming show that will soon be watched by presumably millions of
people.”
Of course, French poet Charles Baudelaire once wrote "The devil's
finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist,” and many today
scoff at the idea of Satan as real supernatural being. Even so, note
that our culture considers the Devil symbolic of pure evil. As such,
perspective is gained by analogizing this matter to something else
symbolizing evil in our time: the Nazis.
Imagine a series portraying a “good Nazi” — with a character sporting
the typical uniform and a Swastika — and billed as a story of
“redemption for the Nazis”? Would we consider this innocuous
entertainment or a blurring of the line between good and evil?
And that’s the point. While it seems unlikely that Lucifer’s
producers actually are “Satanists,” they assuredly are moral
relativists. And such a mindset suffices for evil’s embrace. Apropos to
this, an old cartoon in what, if my recollection is accurate, was New Yorker
magazine showed the Devil addressing a group of people in Hell and
saying (I’m paraphrasing), “There’s no right or wrong down here. It’s
whatever works for you.”
Topside in our temporal world, we hear similar messages such as “If
it feels good, do it”; occultist Aleister Crowley’s maxim “Do what thou
wilt shall be the whole of the law”; and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s utterance in Return of the Jedi,
“Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend
greatly on our own point of view.” British philosopher Edmund Burke
warned that evil would triumph if good men did nothing. But why would we
do anything (positive, anyway) if we consider good and evil mere social
constructs, changing with “point of view”? And even if we had some
vague sense that “ungood”
exists, how could we know what to fight for and fight against with good
and evil having been so conflated? Why, had Luke Skywalker truly taken
Obi-Wan’s relativistic counsel to heart, he might have killed Han Solo
and then become Emperor Palpatine’s PR man.
Yet black and white blended to gray is the norm today. Consider, for instance, the CBS program Angel from Hell, which One Million Moms (OMM) tells us
is “about a ‘not so good’ guardian angel” and contains “blasphemous
content including crude humor, foul language and distasteful dialogue.”
In addition it shows the “angel” using profanity in front of children
and “then joking that she never promised to be G-rated. The premiere
also included the angel hiding liquor in the children's clothes and
saying, 'My booze!' followed by a little boy saying, ‘That's so cool!’"
writes OMM.
Or just contrast the original film Cape Fear (1962) with its
remake (1991). About a lawyer targeted by a violent criminal he once
sent to prison, the original portrays the attorney (Gregory Peck) as a
truly virtuous man in the crosshairs of a wicked and distasteful
miscreant, well played by Robert Mitchum. In the new version, however,
the lawyer (Nick Nolte) is, frankly, a dirtbag. Cheating on his wife, he
has a tumultuous, unappealing family life and is generally a weak man,
the father every boy neither respects nor wants. In contrast, the
criminal (Robert De Niro) is larger than life: He’s clever, smart, and
exhibits superhuman mental strength, not even blinking at excruciating
pain. In other words, the movie portrays no hero. And presented with a
pathetic weak man and a powerful, cool super-villain, whom would
teen boys be more likely to emulate? Hey, remember, you can’t really be
“good,” anyway, because “good” is a social construct, just a “point of
view.” But “power”? That’s certainly real — and alluring.
This is precisely the opposite of the moral training youths received
for millennia and is frighteningly dangerous. It was always heroes who
were imbued with superhuman qualities, including superhuman virtue
(insofar as the civilization in question understood it), an example of
such being Lucas McCain of the old show The Rifleman. And in presenting a strong, admirable character whom every boy would want to be
and who was the embodiment of virtue, children would develop an “erotic
[emotional] attachment” to virtue, as Plato put it, long before they
were capable of understanding its moral components in their abstract
form.
Today we’ve turned this on its head. By eliminating virtuous
characters and portraying strong, manly ones who are the embodiment of
vice, we inculcate an erotic attachment to evil. And “As the twig is
bent, so grows the tree” — erotic attachments formed early usually last
for life.
One thing Lucifer’s producers did get right is their casting
of the main character as “hot as Hell,” as they put it, for the Bible
tells us Lucifer is “perfect in beauty.” And therein lies a lesson for
all: Beware those who would seduce with beauty, power, money, eloquence,
sex — and all the other things that make for great Hollywood fare. Thenewamerican
Mobile devices make it easier to consume more media – at our peril.
U.S. News & World Report
By Michael O. Schroeder
Posted: 10/26/2015 08:31 AM EDT | Edited: 10/26/2015 08:33 AM EDT
Want to get fat, wreck a romantic relationship, perhaps lower your chance of getting pregnant
– if you’re trying – and shorten your life expectancy? Grab the remote.
Click away to see how watching TV, particularly prolonged viewing, can
hurt your health and reduce your quality of life. Spoiler: It’s more
than just sitting that does the damage. It’s what we watch, too, from
the effect of TV romance on real-world love to ads that make us want to
pig out.
1. It may expand your waistline Here's
another reason to skip the commercials, in addition to watching less
TV: “Most people think, 'Well you spend a lot of time sitting around, so
you gain weight.' But most of the impact is just because of the
marketing and advertising during that time that tends to increase intake
of a range of unhealthy food products,” says Steve Gortmaker, a
professor of the practice of health sociology in the Harvard T.H. Chan
School of Public Health.
2. Binge-watching may increase your risk for diabetes Research
on people at higher risk for developing diabetes found that for each
hour spent watching TV per day, the risk of developing the disease
increased 3.4 percent. Rather than focusing on what participants
watched, Andrea Kriska, an epidemiologist at the University of
Pittsburgh and senior author of the research published in April in the
journal Diabetologia, says TV watching was tracked as an indicator of
time people spent sitting. Lead author Bonny Rockette-Wagner says other
research seems to indicate that we move even less while watching TV
compared with other sedentary activities, like sitting at work.
3. It may be bad for baby-making
Although there’s evidence that watching TV,
including in the bedroom, could increase amorousness, a Harvard study
found that men who watched more than 20 hours of television per week had
44 percent fewer sperm than guys who didn’t watch TV. Increased
activity, by comparison, was associated with higher sperm counts.
Previous research also associates prolonged TV viewing with increased
risk of heart disease, which, for men, is also associated with higher
rates of impotence.
4. It could damage your relationships The
more you believe in popular portrayals of romance on television, the
less committed you may be to your real relationship, according to
research published several years ago in the journal Mass Communication
and Society. That ranges from unrealistic expectations of a spouse to
seeing the “costs” of real relationships – such as the loss of time or
freedom – as being higher, which could undermine what’s happening
between the two of you in real life.
5. It could stunt a child's first words
At an
early age, Americans start tuning in to TV – and now other media, as
kids play with smartphones. But while a FaceTime session with a family
member might be OK, for the littlest among us, television can be bad
news. “Television exposure before age 2 is strongly correlated with
decreased language development,” says David L. Hill, chair of the
American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Communications and Media. “We
continue to advise parents not to have the television on or use
television [and] movies routinely to entertain children under age 2.”
6. It could increase aggression
Children
internalize cues, experts say, from what they see on TV to video games.
“The relationship between violent media use and aggression and
desensitization to violence is as strong as or stronger than the
relationship between smoking and lung cancer,” says Hill, author of “Dad
to Dad: Parenting Like A Pro.” Not all children are affected in the
same way, he adds, but exposure to violence
in media makes kids more likely to accept it in their daily lives.
Research shows that early exposure to TV violence also makes it likelier
that kids will grow up to be aggressive adults.
7. It's isolating
The results of research
presented earlier this year at the annual Conference of the
International Communication Association in San Juan, Puerto Rico, found
that feelings of loneliness and depression were linked to watching
television. While the research didn’t conclude that TV watching caused
the issues, researcher Yoon Hi Sung said in a statement that
binge-watching shouldn’t be viewed as a harmless addiction; other experts say increased use of electronics can further isolate individuals or promote antisocial behavior.
8. It can rob us of sleep
Glued to the TV?
Screen time from the TV to tablet – to the TV shows we watch on the
tablet – can make it harder to unwind, cutting into precious sleep, as
technology continues its creep into every aspect of our waking lives.
One simple tip from the pros for adults and kids: Move the TV out of the
bedroom – and don’t watch it there on mobile devices, either.
9. It could shorten our lives A
study of healthy young adults found that watching lots of TV is
associated with premature death. The research, published last year in
the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that participants
who reported watching three hours or more of TV per day had twice the
risk of dying during the 8-year follow-up period than those who said
they didn’t watch more than 1 hour per day. So, to add insult to
injury: If you watch too much TV, you may die sooner than later.
