Posted by Anonymous on 2019/10/25 under Life The more we watch TV, the more we go into alpha brainwave states, the slow and receptive pattern that accepts images and suggestion into consciousness less critically. A state of hypnosis is induced by the alpha frequency, where you are content to just sit and continue watching. Going from the beta to an alpha wave state can affect how we feel, making it pleasurable to induce an alpha wave relaxed state and watching the TV, thereby making it addictive as a habit to “veg” out. Kicking the habit seems to be hard for many people to do. For some reason, they are drawn to spend time and pay attention to the TV. In 1969, Herbert Krugman conducted experiments about human brainwaves and television: “Krugman monitored a person through many trials and found that in less than one minute of television viewing, the person’s brainwaves switched from Beta waves — brainwaves associated with active, logical thought — to primarily Alpha waves. When the subject stopped watching television and began reading a magazine, the brainwaves reverted to Beta waves.” We are in a lower mental state, less evaluative, less critical, less able to discern truth from falsity, reality from unreality. There are many ideas base don images we receive, that we would normally reject, or at least question, under normal conditions. Whereas with television this functionality is impaired. We are filled with both images of half truth and propaganda, but also images that distract and divert our attention from social realities of the world with banal, pointless, irrelevant, mind-numbing fodder and entertainment to keep us stimulated.
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Switching our attention constantly, seems addictive as well. We are drawn to short attention activity, checking our messages, notifications, looking for attention from somewhere.
Time and attention is also fractured in watching frame-breaking split second scenes and rapid temporal shifts in plots. Reality doesn’t operate this way, but technology has allowed imagery to be manipulated. Images are broken up, shifting from one to the other, requiring our attention to keep up with all the constant changes, leading us to develop attention deficits (ADD, ADHD) and a need for attention grabbing visual stimulus. Reality doesn’t match up, becomes too slow and boring.