The TV is Not Your Friend

There are lots of sources of stress in kids’ lives: school, family problems, society’s expectations (anyone looked at all the pictures of impossibly thin models in a magazine lately?), and outright physical danger, whether in the neighborhood or at school. Some you can’t avoid – like taking that biology test – but some you can.

One of the big sources of stress these days is television. I recently heard that if a kid watches 2 or more hours of TV per day, he or she will be more anxious than a kid who doesn’t get such a high dose of TV. This makes sense. Think of what you see and hear when you turn on the TV. Scenes of destruction from natural disasters around the world. Reports on how the worldwide economy is as bad as it was during the Great Depression (or worse). The latest numbers of people losing their jobs in your hometown. Rumors of terrorists planning their next big attack. Now think of how you feel as you see and hear these things.

A few weeks after 9/11, I noticed that I would physically hunch up my shoulders when anything came on the TV or radio even remotely related to the attacks and their aftermath. It got so bad I just stopped listening to the news for a time. I started feeling more relaxed almost immediately. You can help yourself in the same way.

If you’re feeling a bit oppressed lately, one of the easiest ways to cut some stress out of your life is to turn off the TV. Actually, you might want to put all the media in your life on a temporary hiatus, or at least cut back on your consumption, since even when you know something is fiction your nervous system still reacts to it. Skip the violent games. Choose a comedy instead of the latest bloody horror or combat flick. Limit yourself to reading Google news headlines once per day. Heck, cut back on some of your “local” news, too, by limiting your Facebook time.

Nancy Linnerooth, Stress Coach

206.459.1589