would not return to TV viewing again and again. Winn’s argument is compelling because she
cites examples of people who become helpless to turn off the television. Even though they are
ultimately dissatisfied by hours of viewing, they still fall into the same habit and return to viewing
for its passive state. It is not necessarily pleasant, but it is not painful. It is a distraction from the
difficulties of daily life.
When people repeat escapist activities until they prefer an altered state to reality, they have
become addicted. When they prefer one activity to all others it begins to impair their ability to
function normally in society. This is true of any addiction, whether it is television or heroin. As a
result, the addict’s life becomes limited. As Winn puts it, the addict is living “in a holding pattern.”
The addict no longer pursues other activities. However, Winn’s measuring stick for the
impairment of addiction are productive hobbies. These might include reading or sewing. Why
productive hobbies or pleasures are superior to nonproductive
hobbies such as television or
drugs is not clearly defined by Winn. Her point is still a valid one. Whenever a person dedicates
themself to one particular purpose they are limiting their interests and experiences. There is no
impetus for them to develop or diversify, as long as they find a superior pleasure in one pursuit.
Sometimes the experience is not pleasure, but a passive state in which there is no motivation and
no progress. The feeling that a person “ought” to do other things outside the benumbed practice
of television viewing, but does not, indicates that peoples’ lives have been narrowed by their so-called
addiction.
Winn fails to be convincing when she goes on to further define addiction. She defines
addiction not only as the desire to repeat an activity, but as the inability to be satiated by the
activity upon repetition. Her argument is problematic because with drugs there is an initial
guarantee of satisfaction and with television there is not. When you take a drug, there is a
biological pleasure induced. It may require more each time to provide the same effect, but there is
still a pleasurable experience. Television’s ability to produce pleasure is negligible. One rarely
experiences a definite “high” from television. Unless you define addiction as a desire to achieve a
state in which there is no pain, you cannot draw a comparison between television and drugs
across the board. Winn does not define addiction as such.
The adverse effects of an activity distinguishes it from a mere pleasure. These negative
consequences characterize it as an addiction. This part of Winn’s definition is the most
disputable. The negative effects of drugs do not compare to the negative effects of television.
With drug addiction, there are definite physical harms involved. Drugs produce a state from which
people cannot be sobered. Moreover, no one has ever died from a television overdose. The
harms of drugs have been scientifically proven through health effects. The societal harms of
drugs and television are also beyond comparison. Television has been known to cause domestic
tension, but its adverse effects do not cause crime and death. The worst effects of television,
according to Winn, is that it distorts time and may interfere with social relations. These worst
consequences pale in comparison to the consequences of drug use.
A significant element of Winn’s argument about the negative consequences of television
addiction is that it blurs reality and that the viewer loses time. Winn overlooks that unlike drugs, a
person can rouse themselves from the state of television viewing. Someone under the influence
of drugs or alcohol cannot. Their impairment is physical. In addition to this, there are also physical
side effects
when a person curtails use of drugs. The addict becomes physically ill and unable to
function normally. If a person who watches a lot of television ceases to do so, there are no such
consequences. This is a crucial point, because Winn describes addiction as the inability to
function normally without the activity to which one has become addicted.
It would be interesting to learn in greater detail what Winn views as the negative or adverse
effects of television addiction. She does not detail the impact the actual content television could
have, in her chapter entitled “Television Addiction.” Certainly, one could see that television’s
content could have an adverse impact on impressionable addicts, such as children. The act of
viewing itself, not the content, is the focus of her analysis of the influence of television addiction.
While some of the conditions of television addiction resemble those of drug addiction, it does not
fully meet Winn’s criteria for addiction. She cannot give any concrete examples of television’s
harms; she can only insist that it must be harmful.
