Harm from watching and radiation from TV for humans

TV is one of the human inventions that is found in almost every home. Just 50 years ago, such household appliances were considered a luxury item, and only people with good incomes could afford to buy a TV. Nowadays you won’t surprise anyone with the presence of such equipment in the house; moreover, some families have such a device in all rooms. The harm of television to human health has already been proven, but few people remember the danger when watching the next TV series or news broadcast.

What danger comes from TV?

A couple of decades ago, it was believed that only radiation from the TV was dangerous. But now the technology has been improved and the latest television chips emit almost no radiation. But what then is the harm of TV for a person?

According to doctors, people who spend up to 2 hours a day in front of TV are less likely to develop heart and vascular diseases compared to those who spend more than 4 hours watching movies and TV shows every day.

Watching TV for a long time increases the risk of developing hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and musculoskeletal diseases. If a person spends a lot of time watching his favorite programs and films, then after a year he may notice a significant decrease in vision.

Ophthalmologists say that irreparable harm is caused to vision from watching TV. It shows up like this:

If a person looks at the screen, then his vision focuses on just one point. Over time, this leads to deformation of the eye lens. This part of the visual organ may lose the ability to change due to constant static load.
The screen constantly flickers, which also negatively affects the organs of vision. The pupil does not have time to adapt to the frequent changes in the picture, which leads to severe eye strain.
On TV, each color is represented in several different shades. This greatly complicates the functioning of the organs of vision and results in chronic eye strain. As a result, vision may decline sharply.

Watching TV for a long time causes musculoskeletal disorders. A person moves little, due to which muscles and joints atrophy.

TV has a huge impact on human health. Due to prolonged viewing, vision deteriorates, muscle tone is impaired and posture worsens. In the presence of concomitant pathologies, osteochondrosis may develop. The joints become immobile, a person often notices a crunch in the legs and arms at the slightest movements.

You need to remember that watching movies for a long time can cause arthritis!

False relaxation

The amount of time that a modern person spends in front of the TV screen cannot but be terrifying. On average, the population of large industrial cities spends three hours daily on this. This is approximately half of a person’s free time, excluding household chores and sleep. This means that out of 75 years of life, people spend 9 years watching television programs and just sitting in front of a blue screen. Some might attribute this to a great love for TV. Why then is there concern about such passion?

Scientists have conducted a number of studies aimed at studying the body's reactions to exposure to TV. At the same time, changes were recorded that occur in the electrical resistance of the skin and in the heart rate. All these parameters were taken using a special device before and after, as well as while watching television. Similar experiments were carried out not only in specialized laboratories. The readings were also taken in natural, habitual human conditions. At the same time, the TV fan was not just on his favorite sofa in front of his home blue screen. He drank and ate, slept and worked. He always had a device with him that received sound signals. When receiving them, the teleman had to record everything he was doing at the moment and how he felt.

When a signal was received while watching TV, the person characterized his state as passive and relaxed. This was never noted during reading. When the TV was turned off, the feeling of relaxation immediately disappeared, but passivity remained. Viewers confirmed the fact that TV seemed to absorb their energy, leading to emptiness.

Drugs have a similar effect. Tranquilizers that are eliminated from the body very quickly are more addictive than those that are eliminated slowly. So is the viewer. When he watches a TV show, he understands that after turning off the TV, the feeling of relaxation will disappear. And he wants to watch more and more.

Appearance changes

For both adults and children, TV poses a danger in terms of weight gain. Almost all people like to chew something while watching a movie, and it’s not always vegetables or fruits. Most often, a person chooses unhealthy and quite high-calorie foods. These can be crackers, chips, hamburgers and other sandwiches. In addition, I often drink tea and coffee with pastries while watching a movie. Considering that a person sits for several hours in a row and does not expend any energy at all, such excessive eating of food is harmful. This leads to the deposition of fatty deposits, which ultimately lead to excess weight.

A sedentary lifestyle leads not only to the appearance of unattractive folds of fat, but also to the exacerbation of various diseases. If a person moves little and walks in the fresh air, then his immunity decreases and he becomes susceptible to various diseases.

It is especially harmful to eat in front of the TV late in the evening, shortly before bed, or at night, when the stomach is resting.

Diagnosis: TV addiction

For several decades, scientists have been conducting research trying to study the influence of television on humans. They are especially interested in the question of the connection between the scenes of cruelty that we see on silver screens and the realities that exist in everyday life. At the same time, researchers are trying to understand the reason why ordinary consumers still choose the latter between newspapers, magazines and television.

Who is a TV fan? Psychologists and psychiatrists define pathological dependence on something as a deviation from the norm, which corresponds to signs of an inadequate reaction to a specific stimulus. This includes a large amount of time devoted to the object of addiction, and the use of it more often than usual, and the refusal to fulfill professional, social and family responsibilities for the sake of such pastime, and withdrawal into oneself, as well as isolation. These criteria are perfect for those who sit in front of the TV screen for a long time.

Of course, we cannot say that the influence of television on people is only bad. After all, it broadens your horizons and educates, relaxes and entertains, allows you to temporarily forget about the depressing reality and enjoy the beautiful. With the help of television, we can even make purchases at a TV store. However, even those who understand that it is necessary to reduce the time spent in front of a blue screen are sometimes unable to deny themselves the pleasure of watching television programs or interesting films.

How to increase your chances of winning? To do this, it is necessary to carefully study how television influences a person.

Mental changes

When regularly watching news, programs and films, a person becomes overly nervous and irritable. This is due to the fact that news and films are literally full of scenes of violence and various criminal showdowns. The channels are filled with various information, both useful and completely unnecessary, and over time a person becomes addicted to watching certain programs.

The blue screen affects the psyche of not only adults, but also children. Many parents turn on cartoons for their infants, and as a result, the soulless screen becomes not only a nanny for the baby, but also a teacher. According to studies, most preschoolers spend more than 4 hours a day in front of screens. The worst thing is that parents are quite happy with this and children find themselves under the influence of an uncontrolled information flow.

A seemingly harmless pastime like watching your favorite cartoons can lead to serious consequences. A child often watches TV too close and too long, which ultimately leads to the following consequences:

vision decreases, eyes get tired quickly;
a nervous tic develops, the baby involuntarily blinks his eyes;
posture deteriorates;
the psyche is disturbed.

During rapid growth, it is generally not advisable for children to spend more than an hour a day watching cartoons and films. If the baby sits more, the skeleton may not form correctly, which will lead to the development of various pathologies.

If the TV is an old model, then the child may suffer from excessive radiation, which will certainly manifest itself after a while. Such children often suffer from respiratory diseases, suffer from migraines and have problems with the endocrine system. The result of constant radiation can be more serious pathologies, for example, blood diseases.

In recent years, computers and televisions have practically replaced noisy active games, handicrafts and book reading from the lives of modern children. The child prefers to watch a cartoon instead of gatherings in a narrow family circle.

Age of information technology

Currently, we are witnessing a gradual transition of human society to a new type of civilization. Many scientists call it informational. This is explained by the increase in scale, complexity of structures and content of streams carrying certain messages and news. At the same time, researchers note the increasing influence of information technology on the human psyche.

And this fact is confirmed by our daily life. Indeed, over the past decades, we have been bombarded with a simply unimaginable flow of information. Modern media of all types have turned into a single global system, located at a fantastic energy level. This can only mean one thing. Human consciousness has fallen into an artificial trap created by itself, and today it is a kind of “squirrel in a wheel.”

In addition, developing information psychotechnologies are acquiring increasingly sophisticated methods of influence for which nature has not prepared our brain. This is why we tend to become completely defenseless in the face of this trap.

The influence of television on a person in general also turns out to be unfavorable. It manifests itself not only in the negative impact on his health. This question has a lot to do with the psychological sphere.

Effect on young children

Many families now have modern LCD screens. But, despite the fact that there is no radiation from LCD TV models, they are still potentially dangerous for adults and children.

If the adult population at least somehow appreciates what various channels offer for viewing, then children, like a sponge, absorb all the information indiscriminately. It is uncontrolled information that often influences the development and worldview of a child. As a result, many children suffer from speech problems and suffer from nervous disorders.

Teenagers form a certain model of behavior based on films and programs. Very often this model is far from ideal, since scenes of violence predominate on the screen. It is because of this that adolescents may become excessively aggressive and especially cruel.

It is not advisable to place a TV in the room of newborn children. Although such babies do not yet understand the meaning of what the blue screen shows, they can react sensitively to sharp sounds. And if the TV is an old model, then the child will also be exposed to constant radiation.

The mistake many parents make is that they turn on the TV while the child is doing homework. This prevents the student from concentrating, he becomes nervous and absent-minded.

Diagnostics

If the absence of television causes apathy and depression, then telemania occurs.
Almost all people with addiction are sure that they do not experience it. A simple experiment will help you make sure that it is still present.

For four days, completely eliminate TV from your life. After this time, check if you have the following symptoms:

depression;
weakness for no reason;
loss of desire to work;
prostration;
apathy;
mood swings;
suffering;
feeling of worthlessness;
acute shortage of “blue screen”.

If several points are present, then telemania is taking place.

Myths and falsehoods

People come up with ideas, this is traditional. Questions about the harm caused by television have been circulating among people since the 50s, when people knew little about electronics, so many mythical stories appeared. Some of them have already been refuted by scientists, while others should not be refuted at all:

Radiation. The myth comes from the nineties. At that time, people believed that the harm of television to a person lay in the harmful radiation from its screen. In fact, there were no harmful television devices even then, and today’s technologies eliminate such influence altogether.
Harm to computer and TV. It is claimed that the television screen damages vision more than a computer display - this is not true. Just like image display devices on smartphones, tablets or laptops, they are all equally harmful.
A useless phenomenon. Many people insist on its uselessness when they talk about the dangers of TV for humans. In fact, it has many benefits, which we discussed in the article.

Viewers' opinions

I don’t know whether TV is harmful to human health, but it has a positive effect on society as a whole. Who else but TV will set certain boundaries for the behavior of the masses...

Nikita, 18 years old (Perm)

The TV and computer monitor are not so harmful. It's impossible to leave, damn it.

Elena, 34 years old (Kaluga)

Let's watch without harm

After we have figured out why TV is harmful, we can approach the issue of protecting ourselves from these negative influences. You can protect yourself from the negative influence of the “box” and not only by refusing to view it. Let's look at the list of our recommendations that we have prepared for you:

Distance . There should be a distance of at least 3 meters between you and the device, depending on the size of the display device. It is also recommended that the device be placed at or below eye level.
New technologies . We recommend using only the new generation of television devices, this way you can minimize the risk of harm.
Nutrition . You should not eat food while watching, then the question of whether TV is harmful for people with excess weight problems will no longer be asked.
Lighting. We do not recommend viewing in complete darkness or in a very brightly lit room. Here you need to have a sense of proportion.
Mode . Make a setting for yourself, for example, not to spend more than one hour per day or more than half an hour in a row watching. Don’t look at one point for a long time; it’s best to run your eyes all over the monitor. Calculate how many hours a day you spend watching TV?

A little about the benefits and summary

The benefits of television for humans seem to many to be a not-so-funny joke. Most of the useful properties have now been taken over by the Internet, but 100% of the population does not use it yet. So, firstly, you can watch TV for free and often receive very useful information. Using “authority – population” as a means of communication also has some usefulness.

However, we discussed the benefits of TV for people in a similar article. Whether to watch or not is entirely your personal decision. The TV, the benefits and harms of which we discussed today, should be used carefully and then everything will be ok. Thank you for your attention!

For what

In terms of propaganda in Soviet times, the role of television became invaluable. It goes without saying that the party leadership could not help but take advantage of this circumstance. Not a single decision of the party congress was made without once again reminding of the need for dialogic social development - precisely thanks to TV.

Control over broadcasting was extremely strict. Statistics on broadcasting in the era of the USSR show impressive figures - in 1985, broadcasting was carried out in 45 languages of the peoples of the USSR, central television broadcast for a total of over 148 hours on four programs.

Other threats

A potential danger that TV exposes us to is screen flickering - blinking under the influence of an image-forming beam of luminous phosphor particles. When viewing a television picture, such flickering is almost imperceptible, but if you look at the screen with peripheral vision, it becomes clearly visible. The blinking of particles coincides with the frame rate: the lower the frequency, the more dangerous it is to health. First of all, vision is affected, and in particular the retina of the eye. In older TV models, the flicker frequency was 50 Hz per second, in newer and more expensive ones it reaches 100 Hz. A frequency of at least 85 Hz is considered safe.

A working CRT TV produces a voltage of several thousand volts, but when the device is turned off, a residual voltage of up to several hundred volts can remain, and if you touch an unprotected area, you can get an electric shock. Those most likely to suffer from a painful stroke are people suffering from heart disease. And although discharge resistors have begun to be added to television circuits, it is better not to touch the TV for some time after turning it off.

As you know, there is a vacuum inside the television tube, which can explode due to outside air pressure or mechanical damage to the screen. A special metal bandage should, to some extent, protect our TV from an explosion, but it will be useless before a strong blow to the screen. You need to be careful - flying fragments of a television tube can seriously injure you. Another danger posed by the TV is toxic barium compounds that accumulate in the cathodes. First of all, TVs that have expired are dangerous, so they must either be buried or recycled. But it’s not only old CRT TVs that create problems for us, but also modern plasma models. Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), which is formed in a plasma panel when heated, has been recognized by scientists as a greenhouse gas. According to experts, 4,000 tons of this gas were released into the atmosphere in 2008, and in 2010 this figure doubled (the lifespan of NF3 is at least 500 years). The American organization Geophysical Research Letters believes that nitrogen trifluoride is much more dangerous than another greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide.

Better to play it safe

You must always remember that radiation is created even by a non-working TV set that is simply plugged into an outlet: the longer the wire, the stronger the electromagnetic field. Environmentalists advise setting aside special places for the TV, for example, the outer corner of the room, bordering the entrance or street. You should avoid placing TV devices next to a reinforced concrete wall, since radiation can be shielded - a distance of 50 cm would be optimal. It is not at all advisable for electrical wires to pass under the bed - it is better to put them behind the baseboard. If you cannot live without a TV, then you need to follow simple rules: watch TV in sufficient lighting, maintain the optimal distance - it should be 5 times the diagonal of the screen, and also reduce the time spent watching your favorite programs to several hours a day. If you follow these simple rules, you will maintain your health for many years.

Often objects created with good intentions and for the benefit of humanity acquire opposite qualities; the harm of television is an example of this. Recently, every second person has heard about the negative influence of TV, and if not, then about its uselessness. Today the trend is the idea that the “box” is an attribute of a limited worldview and laziness.

Scientists are not so categorical; in their opinion, harm from TV does not always exist, as they like to talk about. Many stereotypes associated with the harm of TV are unproven, however, the negative impact still exists.

Electromagnetic fields

Scientists have concluded that an electromagnetic field intensity exceeding 0.2 μT (microtesla) is harmful to humans. And our good old CRT televisions (with a cathode ray tube or picture tube), which still work in many of our homes, generate electromagnetic fields of 2 μT. However, we are talking about the readings of the device in the immediate vicinity of the TV - with distance from it, the magnetic field gradually fades away. The most protected part of a CRT TV is the screen, the safe distance from which will be 1.1 meters. But from the less protected side wall, according to the same scientists, the distance should be 1.2 meters.

Electromagnetic waves have a negative impact on people with weakened immune, hormonal and endocrine systems, but they pose a particular danger to children and pregnant women. Research by Swedish and British scientists shows that people living in conditions of constant exposure to electromagnetic fields have a 3-fold increased chance of developing leukemia. Such people more often suffer from reproductive, vegetative, cardiovascular and even mental diseases. True, the studies do not report at what distance and for what time it is necessary to spend near television screens for such a risk to take on real shape.

general information

The influence of television on human health is not entirely a myth.
According to data received from scientists, the body is negatively affected by the intensity of the electromagnetic field exceeding 0.2 μT. CRT televisions equipped with a kinescope or having a cathode ray tube are capable of generating a field of 2 μT. Such radiation from a TV is recorded in maximum proximity to the source: no more than a few centimeters. The further a person moves away, the lower the field performance. The optimal range is considered to be 1.1-1.2 meters: there is practically no harm.

Radiation from the TV is also dangerous - ionizing radiation, reminiscent of ordinary x-rays. It is formed when electrodes attack the protected screen. Normal anode voltage is 20-25 kV. If there is some malfunction in the electronics, the level rises to 90 kV, which already exceeds the voltage in the X-ray tubes.

CRT TVs

The main source of radiation is a cathode ray tube. Beta particles have low energy. If the kinescope is of high quality, it provides reliable protection, thanks to which the electron beam practically does not extend beyond the boundaries of the device.

Lead-coated glass is used to reduce X-ray radiation. In very old devices there is an additional source of ionizing effects - triodes. They are located outside the kinescope and are necessary to stabilize the voltage. The lack of reliable protection leads to the fact that triodes “produce” more rays than the kinescope itself.

LCD TVs

There is practically no radiation from an LCD TV, since there is no picture tube - the main source of danger. The image is projected completely differently. Special elements are used that do not require significant voltage. About 5 W is enough for them. Conductors generate minor radiation, which is “blocked” by special elements that provide protection.

LED

There are no beta or x-rays in such devices. Electromagnetic radiation is negligible. You can fix it at the back wall of the device, where the main components and parts of the device are located. The matrix that creates the image is not a source of toxic radiation.

Plasma TVs

The harm from a plasma TV is minimal. The monitor of such devices is divided into numerous cells containing inert gas. When heated, it begins to glow. The device generates a large amount of heat and is not recommended to be placed in small rooms.

Signal amplification sources

To amplify TV waves, it is necessary to increase the currents in certain nodes. This leads to increased radiation. The human body is not negatively affected if the device functions only as a receiving object. It is important that when locating stationary television towers, accepted standards are observed: such devices are not installed near residential buildings.