Some particular event may motivate us to do something. At another time we may do the same thing from quite different motivation. Just now, when you were looking at TV, were you doing so for entertainment, for enlightenment or simply as an escape?
The housewife has got her husband off to work, and the children off to school. It was all a bit of a rush. And the little one has been complaining of a pain in his tummy. ‘I suppose it was his nerves. But it could be something else.’ She is stressed. Makes a cup of tea, turns on the TV just to help her settle out of it. Her thoughts are taken away from the little one’s tummy, and her husband being in such a rush that there was no kiss goodbye. In a little while her stress is reduced, and she gets on with the chores of housework.
So in this way TV becomes an effective and rather harmless means of relieving minor stress. Her husband comes home. He is stressed by the problems of the day. She wants to discuss household events; she needs to talk to relieve the emotional isolation of being alone in the house. But because of his own tension, he immediately turns on the TV. His tension is reduced and hers rises! Of course, the real answer to this situation lies in the fact that the simple ‘being with’ of man and woman reduces the tension of both parties.
The danger is that TV can become the major stress-reducing mechanism for all and sundry in the household. Anyone who feels a little tense or restless from minor stress turns on the TV. It does not matter what the programme is, it is only the distraction that is wanted. This kind of escape from stress becomes socially destructive from the time that is wasted. If the individual can learn simple, biologically effective ways of managing stress, he is free to use this wasted time in productive leisure that will improve the quality of his life.
The individual may become aware that he is in fact hooked on TV in just the same way as others are hooked on alcohol, drugs or tranquillizers. This awareness itself may be quite upsetting, and will compound with other factors to increase still further the stress situation.
*72/98/5*
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