I hate to do this to you. I hate to tell you that your parents and nagging teachers were right. But they might’ve been. Recently published scientific research suggests that watching TV could literally shrink your brain. Sure, it’s not quite the “rot” your elders once promised would happen to it, but go easy on them. They themselves may have watched so much television that their shrunken brains can’t recall the right word.
According to a study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, researchers followed about 1,700 adults for more than two decades. They found that people who reported watching television “very often” in midlife later had smaller volumes in several brain regions associated with memory and Alzheimer’s disease. They also had more white matter hyperintensities, signs of damage to the brain’s wiring associated with cognitive decline.
Since sitting has been cast as the great enemy of the 21st century, you might assume that it’s all the lounging around that’s decaying your brain. It’s not. It’s the passivity of TV watching. Sitting on your butt watching TV for hours at a time isn’t as mentally engaging as sitting on your butt and working for hours at a time. The researchers found that people who spend lots of time sitting at work actually showed larger volumes in some brain regions and less white matter damage.
Binge-Watching Might Be Doing More to Your Brain Than You Think
The researchers accounted for exercise, diabetes, smoking, alcohol use, and body weight, and the findings still held. Men also had a stronger association between heavy TV watching and brain changes, but the researchers say they still need to figure out exactly why.
This by no means suggests that you should cancel all of your streaming subscriptions and throw your 80-inch OLED into a bonfire. The study was purely observational, and relied on people accurately remembering their TV habits from decades earlier. It also didn’t include any baseline brain scans. In other words, there’s no way from this study to definitively prove that TV watching directly leads to brain shrinkage. All it does is establish a link that this or other research teams can further explore down the line.
And yet, it’s no less disconcerting. It’s the kind of study that makes you look back on all the 7-season, 24-episode shows you’ve binge-watched over the years and now makes you wonder if they will be responsible for one day not being able to remember your kids’ names.
Damn you, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
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