After watching an hour long primetime tv show, do you ever ask yourself, “I wonder how bad that was for my health?” People tend to unanimously agree that watching an abundance of television for years can be detrimental to your health. But often time those studies are so abstract it’s hard to relate. But what if we could tell you, down to the hour, how bad TV actually was for you? Furthermore, what if we could compare an hour’s worth of tv watching to another very dangerous activity? (This might be a surprise to some.) After the jump there is a study that can do just that, but we have some questions of our own to add to the mix.
A study by Australian scientists at the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland found a shocking result after studying some 11,000 adults and their tv watching habits. The scientists were able to deduce that watching an hour worth of television while remaining inactive could take a full 22 minutes off of one’s life. This is roughly equivalent to the damage smoking 2 cigarettes can do. Sure watching television can be unhealthy but should we really see it as a deadly behavior?
The study clarifies that it isn’t the actual act of watching TV that is detrimental to your health. Instead, it's the sedated, inactive state of your body that is the larger problem. But this instantly raised questions with us. If the act of watching TV wasn’t the issue, isn’t any activity dangerous if it requires you to be immobile? What about reading a book? Or working on the computer? Or sitting at school? Or sleeping? Are all of these daily tasks killing us? The unfair bias towards strictly watching TV makes the study seem suspect but no less alarming if true.
Regardless of just how dangerous watching TV or staying immobile for a prolonged period of time can be it is important to remind ourselves how crucial exercise is to a healthy lifestyle. In the same article, we’re told that 15 minutes of moderate exercise a day can add 3 years to your life.
Does this study make you reevaluate your TV watching habits? Or maybe it's a matter of finding exercises you can do simultaneously. I sense a future post in the works...
[Images: Flickr member SFB579 and Gael Martin licensed for use under Creative Commons]
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There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
- Mark Twain
I'd much rather die after 60 hedonistic years than to live for 120 ascetic years.
Sam I Am: it's not the dying at 60 hedonistic years that I think most people worry about. It's living for 60 doing hedonistic things, then struggling along for another 20 on pills/life saving measures in pain. It's generalizing for sure, but what kind of quality of life is that?
I'm glad you pointed out the possible flaws in the study. I walk or ride my bicycle to two miles to school each day, go to classes for ten hours, then come home. My wife and I go running. After we go running we sit and watch TV. I'm done running, it's time to relax and unwind before bed.
Also homework, dang.
yes, exercise and entertainment are both important for life.
One hour of idleness will NOT shorten the life by 22 minutes. Scientists should know better. This kind of data is really perverted, the result of government-funded propaganda. It is regular (daily) idleness that may impact your life. But one single hour does NOT have that impact. Whoever says so cannot be taken seriously. Depending on circumstances, one hour of rest may be very necessary, e.g. after hiking for four hours. So do not panick just because a government scientist is trying to scare you. Use your education to assess whether the internet feeds you garbage.
@Mapex. You should first actually READ the article before going antigoverment conspiracy theory on everyone. And maybe switch to decaf.
This study is seriously flawed. Yes, vegging out all day, everyday will negatively affect your health; but 2 hours of sitting won't take an hour off your life. All the students in the world would drop dead by 30!
If I spend 8hrs @ work, with, let's say 6, at idle. Then 3 hours at school, an hour to eat, and hour total in the car...That's almost 4 hours off my life EVERY DAY. 14 hours a week! 588 a year! A month of my life every year is lost. Without TV!
Yeah.....this is kinda a BS study :-)
Scientists do know better, babycakes. Science journalists make money off of sensationalism and simplification.
wesaturtle, what an argument for legalizing euthanasia:)
Obviously the TV-viewing needs to be put in context of the activity level from the other 23 hours of one's day. Surfing AT and affiliate sites for an hour is probably no better.
Seriously? An hour of television can shave 22 minutes off of a sedentary person's life? Well, if there is actually any merit to this study, then considering the fact that I watched more than 1,000 hours of reality TV to research and write www.realitybitesbackbook.com -- and sat at my desk transcribing at least 25% of that source material, which took several hours per episode -- I guess I'm going to die really, really young.
I'm inactive while I read too...will reading for an hour shave 22 minutes off my life?
Cross-sectional surveys are for marketing not science. Scientific experiments require control groups. Furthermore, anyone who has taken an entry level psychology course knows that correlation does not equal causation. Did they not consider the amount of time watching influential McDonalds commercials? Did they have the same job, seating arrangement, family size, stress levels etc? Sure, there is some correlation buried in there, but for every news/blog in America to simplify this to "WATCHING TV FOR A HOUR TAKES 22 MINUTES OFF YOUR LIFE!" is just a bit stupid. It's like the "Mozart makes you smart!" shenanigans...
Not to state the obvious, but wont watching one hour of TV shorten your life by exactly one hour?
A further study would seem to suggest that our lives are constantly getting shorter every second!
I like my tv shows thanks ^_^
I'm more interested in the number of braincells an hour of television kills off. I suspect quite a few.
The abstract (here) says, "Compared with persons who watch no TV, those who spend a lifetime average of 6 h/day watching TV can expect to live 4.8 years ... less."
Take the total life lost and divide it by the total hours watched.
(4.8 years of life lost*365.25 days/year*24 hours/day*60 minutes/hour)/(6 hours of watching TV/day*365.25 days/year*(78-25) years)
gives 21.7 minutes of life lost/hour of watching TV. (78 is life expectancy, and 25 is from the statement "after the age of 25".)
It says an average of 6 hours a day, which means they considered a range, but I have no idea if this works for the first hour. I didn't read the whole study, and maybe they look at the effect for different ranges, not just non-watchers vs the average.
Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, and I would think that most people who watch more than, say, 2 hours of TV per day on average have other problems that would be the cause. Seriously, who watches 6 hours of TV per day on average?
They do give a caveat: "This study is limited by the low precision with which the relationship between TV viewing time and mortality is currently known." So maybe they didn't think they had good enough data to show the incremental cost of an additional hour of TV vs. just the average.
Still, the conclusion is appropriate: "TV viewing time may be associated with a loss of life that is comparable to other major chronic disease risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity."
Take away: if you watch a lot of TV, try reducing your time in front of the TV and finding some other enjoyable activities to do instead.
Australia has scientists?
Ugh. Why is this crappy study continuing to make the rounds?
It made a quick go-around a month ago on various news outlets (MPR, NYT, etc) and was promptly dropped but not before many writers and reporters questioned how the study did not account for all sorts of variables. This regurgitation presented here with scant analysis is frustrating.
Just going by the summary, I have to wonder about other variables in the study.
Would watching tv for an hour be more unhealthy than doing other sedentary activities for an hour because the tv-watching might lend itself to snacking, for example? (easier to snack while watching TV than while sitting at a desk keyboarding)
And if someone is watching tv for Six Hours a Day, as teewonk noted above, well, that's a whole 'nother issue. That'd be a person who not only is sedentary (and maybe eating to go with the tv-watching) but who also, from the sound of things, isn't engaged in a range of activities and is possibly alone too much -- all of that can affect someone's overall health and shorten someone's life, too.
Yes, lots of variables here ... Personally, I'm not going to stop watching Colbert Report and The Daily Show because of this study; that's all I can say! ;) (besides, they have so many ads, they compel me to get up and walk around during the 30 mins.,, pick up around the place, let my 2 cats in and out, and maybe run a dustmop over the floors during the show or the ads)
P.S. Love the photo above of the Homer Simpson slippers! Made me laugh ...
Junk science at it's best! Too few study participants to draw these kinds of conclusions! Thanks for the tip-off, though, will be a great example to give my students. And sleeping is super important! People who have a genetic defect where they can't sleep die within a few weeks of stopping sleep. And yet we have no idea why sleep I'd so important.
@ unabridge- actually, watching TV for an hour kills 0 brain cells. The notion of brain cells dying due to lazy activities like TV or video-games is simply a hyperbole that pragmatic luddites use to scare people!
Source: I have a PhD in Neuroscience.
Pretty sure the 8 hours of sitting at work doing something I hate is going to kill me before that hour of TV- especially if I have to give up the TV which brings me some escapism in the evenings and makes my life bearable lately.
@Sam I Am: Hedonistic or Ascetic, it's about quality of life over quantity. I would rather be healthy, indulge occasionally, and live for however long I will live. I know that when I exercise regularly, eat healthy food and sleep an appropriate amount, I feel better and handle stress better as well.
I have neighbors in their sixties who are literally on death's door, who chain smoke, only eat food bought at the gas station, and think Pepsi Zero and beer are equivalent to water. Oh and they have Type II diabetes (not hard to figure out why). They end up in the hospital every 3 or 4 months for malnutrition/dehydration. I can't imagine how many tax dollars have been spent resuscitating them only for them to continue to kill themselves, and I can't imagine how horrible they must feel due to that lifestyle.