There used to be a tee shirt floating around that said: “Kill your TV.” I don’t think that’s bad advice. In my quest to become a more optimistic person I’ve found a very strong roadblock in the television. We often keep the TV on even when we aren’t watching it, for background noise. Especially if we spend a lot of time alone.

The craving for human voices and the illusion of human contact can be great when you spend a lot of hours alone. But could the television itself increase stress, anxiety and depression? I think it can.

First there’s the news. I don’t watch the news. Primarily because it’s almost always bad news. It gives a skewed view of the world. There isn’t a balance between bad news and good news, it’s mostly just bad news. Crime, disease, natural disasters oh my. Yeah, you’re going to rest soundly after that. And the thing is…the way this news is presented, it goes straight to the fear centers of the brain. These aren’t the logical reasoning places. This is the fight or flight place.

The big thing about the news that’s a problem is…most of it is stuff we can’t control. So there’s nothing to fight. And because of the huge volume of information being sent to us, where exactly is there to run? We haven’t evolved to deal with this.

Then there are commercials. Constant advertisements bombarding you with, “you’re not pretty enough,” “You’re not thin enough,” “You aren’t rich enough,” “You probably have this illness so you should go talk to your doctor about it and be sure to request this drug.”

But that isn’t all. Then we get to the actual reason most of us watch television…entertainment. Sitcoms are funny but they almost all universally promote cynicism and pessimism. Listen to the jokes. It’s almost universally sarcastic pessimism. Movies and other programs stimulate the stress response because the brain doesn’t realize this is all make believe.

This isn’t to say television or movies are evil or all bad all the time, it’s only bad when it’s constant. I know sometimes when I’m anxious or depressed television tends to help initially to distract me, but then I find the television itself creates a constant source of stress. Simply because of all the various garbage being passively downloaded straight into the brain.

I’ve started keeping the television off and listening to music instead. I don’t need to hear about how bad everything is every day. How can humans cope in that? There is a real three dimensional world out there, maybe we should be spending more time in it.

It’s true that books have much of the same conflicts but something about books I think causes people to take the journey with the character, which almost always ends on an optimistic note. Something has been fought, something has been won, something has been accomplished. It seems to me that the passive acceptance involved in television tends to trigger our fear response much more readily than it does any sort of long term optimism from watching someone save the day. (Though how much day saving is really involved in your average sitcom?) I think it’s possible books might have a slightly different effect because they aren’t passive. You have to engage the logic centers of your brain to read and process language.

Still, I also notice if I read too much in certain genres like horror or murder mystery that it tends to take a toll on me. It’s probably a good idea to mix some light and fluffy in there. It’s all about balance.