David Foster Wallace wrote a very similar essay about television and how it makes people depressed.
He argues that TV makes people feel lonely by showing other people having fun. At the same time, TV is a short-term cure for loneliness because the viewer gets to hang out with their friends inside the TV. Wallace calls TV a "malignant addiction", because the act of watching TV is a short-term cure for the harmful effects of TV. Alcohol is another common malignant addiction; exercise addiction is an example of a non-malignant addiction.
I can't peer into the mind of David Foster Wallace any more than any of the rest of us, but is it possible that he wrote this essay borne out of his own battles with depression? What I mean to say is, did his own depression cloud his view of television making other people depressed?
(I'm not asking you, the parent poster. Merely wondering aloud, I suppose.)
Interestingly, some might argue that his depression afforded him the clarity to have this view. Conversely, the lack of depression clouds the views of others:
"Depressive realism is the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias"
You have to be careful about the studies on depressive realism, though; a lot of them are poorly designed. I remember reading about one study (and I'm not 100% on the details) where subjects basically interacted with a machine that flashed lights or something at random, and the depressed ones were more likely to come to the realization that their actions had no effect on the machine. The flaw is, if you design a scenario where people's actions really do have no effect on the outcome, of course you're going to discover that depressed people have a more accurate perception of reality--not because they actually do, but because you've put them in a situation that corresponds to their cognitive bias.
"Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Medical School looked at the media habits of 4,142 healthy adolescents and calculated that each additional hour of TV watched per day boosted the odds of becoming depressed by 8%."
> "Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Medical School looked at the media habits of 4,142 healthy adolescents and calculated that each additional hour of TV watched per day boosted the odds of becoming depressed by 8%."
It's assumed the TV is causing the depression, whilst I'm sure it's the lack of social interaction that is causing the depression. This is ignorant generalization. Are sports fans who get together to watch the game 8% more likely to be depressed? I seriously doubt it, because they've got 2/3 friends there to spend time with.
If it was mandatory for 3+ people to be in a room for a TV to activate, then this depression figure would disappear, but those socially isolated people who no longer have a TV would probably figure out how to tie a hangman's knot and eliminate themselves from any future asinine statistics.
I think it's more that TV and Facebook and such are enablers of less than healthy behavior, not causes. The whole problem is that they DO provide a diminished dose of what healthy socializing provides and continually suppress the motivation to seek out something more substantial. It's sort of akin to snacking on junk food all day long and never eating a real meal. Sure, you can keep yourself from getting hungry, but you're not getting any actual sustenance, and in the long run you will experience feelings way more unpleasant than hunger if you keep it up. It would probably be better if those foods provided no hunger satisfaction at all. Then people could enjoy them occasionally for the taste, but wouldn't be tempted to use them as substitutes for real food.
Personally, I quit Facebook a few weeks ago, and I've been much happier and more productive for it. I might go back at some point, but honestly I don't even feel the urge anymore. I'd rather just be alone when I'm alone. Get work done, sort out my thoughts, etc., and then when I feel like being with people, I'll make the effort to call around or round some people up. Overall I find myself getting more out of both kinds of experience. I've also noticed, strangely enough, that people have tended to seek me out more since I quit Facebook, I suppose since they no longer have an easier alternative for keeping up with me, and when we meet up, it feels like there's actually some catching up to do, as opposed to the feeling that you already know everything that's going on with a person because you constantly post on each others' walls and read their status updates.
> socially isolated people who no longer have a TV would probably figure out how to tie a hangman's knot and eliminate themselves from any future asinine statistics.
This is probably intended as a joke, but it’s really not funny, especially in the context of a discussion of DFW.
Rather than "TV makes people feel lonely", that's more like "Sitcoms make people feel lonely".
Could you not turn the argument around, and say that watching shows like Oz, The Wire or Dexter where the other people definitely aren't having fun makes people feel better?
He argues that TV makes people feel lonely by showing other people having fun. At the same time, TV is a short-term cure for loneliness because the viewer gets to hang out with their friends inside the TV. Wallace calls TV a "malignant addiction", because the act of watching TV is a short-term cure for the harmful effects of TV. Alcohol is another common malignant addiction; exercise addiction is an example of a non-malignant addiction.
The essay is called E Unibus Pluram. Full text here (pdf): http://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf