If you have a regular job (and right here I’ve lost my recent college graduate audience), and get a decent amount of sleep every night, and we throw in the time it takes getting ready for work, traveling to work and back, preparing meals, etc., it’s startling to read that we North Americans spend, on average, a little over eight hours a day “consuming media,” according to a study by ZenithOptimedia ( http://qz.com/416416/we-now-spend-more-than-eight-hours-a-day-consuming-media/ ).
Eight hours surfing the Internet, watching TV, listening to the radio, reading this or that–that’s a huge chunk of your life. Even more amazingly, Latin Americans are said to spend 13 hours a day (!) consuming media.
Doesn’t leave much time for love, friendship, exercise, play, or other old-fashioned aspects of human existence, does it? It also might suggest a reason for the current world-wide obesity plague. Those eight hours, for many people, represent virtually every waking minute apart from work.
Wow! Gee whiz–do you think it might matter at all: the content of the media consumed?
Is it possible that, if the content of the media consumed is full of filth, violence, lewdness, crime, and despair, the consumer’s mind and spirit might become filled with filth, violence, lewdness, crime, and despair?
Is it possible that we are programming ourselves to be lazy and immoral bastards?
Just askin’.