TV Consumption is a Mental Disorder?
March 7, 2012
Mr. Shirky raised an interesting point about TV consumption and unhappy people. He makes the connection that people become more unhappy and lonely because of our “part time job” as a TV watcher.
I automatically thought back to my experiences and my studies. I’m a psychology major and the addiction to TV (games, internet, etc.) is always brought up. It’s quite obvious that it’s becoming a problem.
There’s proposed plans of adding the addiction to TV, video games, internet, etc. to the revised DSM (basically a book of all the mental illnesses.) So in other words, they want to make the addiction of technology a mental disorder. When I first heard about this, I was blown away. I thought people are only addicted to drugs and alcohol but we can also be addicted to technology?
The first person that comes to mind is the boy who went bizarre after his mother cancelled his WOW account. Have you seen this? It’s hilarious but if you think a bit deeper, you might realized what technology is turning many of us into.
March 12th, 2012 at 2:51 pm
To be honest, I’m a little surprised that media addictions aren’t listed in the DSM already. Seems like something that would make it n there pretty quickly.
And I have to say that, as much as I find that video amusing, I don’t think it’s real. It’s almost too much — he had me until that bit with the remote. Doesn’t seem to me like a typical rage reaction. Apparently there is a whole series of videos like this featuring the same kid so I’m starting to think it’s fake.