It's in the house of everyone. Some people having more than one, each in every room, even in the bathrooms. Television. From watching your favorite TV series, or those reality shows, the news or of course movies, TV has become a must have in a home. The average person until the age of 18 will have watched about 24000 hours of TV. In that time a person could've finished 2 years of university, could've studied 1 or 2 languages, speaking both of them almost fluently, or could've read a whole library. Millions of people are so hooked that they fit the criteria for substance abuse as defined in the official psychiatric manual, according to Rutgers University psychologist and TV-Free America board member Robert Kubey. Heavy TV viewers exhibit five dependency symptoms. These include: 1) using TV as a sedative; 2) indiscriminate viewing; 3) feeling loss of control while viewing; 4) feeling angry with oneself for watching too much; 5) inability to stop watching; and 6) feeling miserable when kept from watching.
TV addiction has the same nature as others addiction; the need to be comfortable and reassurance of safer alternative (the TV) and for not being exposed to any real-world interactions.
"No addiction can be described simply by the object of the addiction without directly relating the environment of the addict."(Stanton Peele)
TV addiction is always rising in our society, because our worlds are shown to be increasingly dangerous, whether crimes rates actually go up or down. One example, a Danish woman was arrested in New York and her child taken from her for leaving the child outside at a restaurant while she ate just inside, a common practice in her country. Our world, beginning with the US, may be best named in the 21st Century as the world of TV/web/gambling addiction (although drugs will always be with us) as we increasingly focus inside our homes or, when we leave them, turn to environments like the modern gambling casino.
Now the issue isn't