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Visual Overload

I was traveling for work to a city in Midwest I have never been to before. It turned out to be tidy but unremarkable town and I had arrived too late to meet the others from team for dinner. Having nothing better to do, I turned on the TV to catch the local stations and see if I could get a better feel for the place. I have lived TV-free for decades in my home so every time I turn on the TV it is a shock to the system. An hour of it left me struggling to fall asleep even though it had been a long day and I was tired. I thought it was a result of all the visual and aural stimulation I am not used to but maybe its not just me.

“We’ve found that self-proclaimed binge-watchers exhibit higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression,” says Jessica S Kruger, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo who has studied the public health impacts of binge-watching. “There are also studies out of Harvard showing that among people who spend two hours watching TV the risk of diabetes goes up by 20%, the risk of heart disease by 15% and early death by 13%.”

That experience made me think about how people who watch TV regularly and use that as their primary source of news could be entirely different from those that don't watch any TV at all. I know both kinds of people and have to say the TV crowd feels like they are floating above ground where its easier to find things in common with each other - there could be some sense of community. The rest of us are rooted in a different kind of reality - a reality that is a bit different for each person because our reading sources are varied and the conclusions we arrive at depend on who we are.

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