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This video-style filming has been known to have an effect on people's moods, particularly in developing brains.
Akio Mori, a professor at Tokyo''s NihonUniversity, conducted a recent study observing the effects of video games on brain activity. The results showed a decreaseof beta waves the more one played video games. "Beta wave activity in people in theexperimental group was constantly near zero, even when they weren't playing, showing that they hardly used the prefrontal regions of their brains."
Beta wave activity indicates liveliness in the prefrontal region of the brain. Many of the subjects in that group told researchers that they "got angry easily, couldn't concentrate, and had trouble associating with friends." (click here)
Another study cited found similar results and reported: "Youths who are heavy gamers can end up with ''video-game brain,'' in which key parts of the frontal region of their brain become chronically underused, altering moods."
Drama
On television, everything is a big deal. There is no perspective on anything. This is understandable to a point. Even Shakespeare didn't write about the relationships that worked. There's usually not much to say about them from a writer's point of view.
On the other hand, when that is all people see, they become inured to the subtleties and the quiet that is necessary to good relationships in ordinary life.
And therein lies part of the caveat both reflected and inspired by the lives led on television--ordinary is far too ordinary.
One of the most famous examples of this syndrome is what happened with the WWII veterans who had seen so much drama and horror that the ordinary lives they returned to were intolerable. Many of them took to riding instead of flying and, by some accounts, a couple of those veterans inspired the beginnings of the Hells Angels. It is not dissimilar neurologically from what happens in an addiction. You need more and more of it (near-death experiences, skin-crawling escapes, recklessness and thrill) to feel anything at all. We see it still and we call it Post-traumatic stress disorder.
What should we call it when the stressor is CNN? Or CSI? Or Allstate?
There's Always an Enemy: Viral Fear on TV
Perhaps this isn't entirely new, but it seems to have been brought to new heights. Shakespeare was a master at creating tension between a protagonist and a hidden or furtive antagonist almost 500 years. It is true that enemies are as old as Cain and Abel.
But something is different with the intensity and the anonymity of the danger the enemy represents. Not to mention that in this go-around with fear, the fate of not one man, or one prince or even one kingdom is at stake--it's the whole world and everything in it.
In wars past, even in surprise attacks by neighboring hordes, there was at least the possibility of an escape.
The enemy now is pervasive and always present with us. We are utterly powerless before the face of terrorism.
And when it is presented to us by the pharmaceutical, banking, and insurance companies, we can only feel safe if we buy what they're selling.
