Entertaining Ourselves to Death

Entertaining Ourselves to Death
By Kim Bonney
CWNews.org

ST. LOUIS - Every day more and more Americans spend more and more time staring into a flat screen, and less and less time living in the real world. We spend countless hours watching TV, surfing the web, playing video games, and listening to I-Pod's. But some say our endless hunger for entertainment is actually starving us to death.

A recent New York Times headline sums it up like this: "Yawn: These Are Such Exciting Times." This is the entertainment generation. We've got movies, malls, and MP3 players. From the Internet to plasma TV's, bungee jumping weddings to "Desperate Housewives," the list goes on. Americans just can't get enough. Yet with all the gizmos and gadgets, this media crazed generation still whines, "There's nothing to do!"

One of the latest trends in entertainment can be found at places like Game Time Nation which CBN News visited in New York City. It's a new generation of video game lounge where the clientele can use game consoles like X-Box or PlayStation 2, hooked up to 32-inch plasma TVs, all from the comfort of their own plush couch.

Gaming centers like this are popping up nationwide to the tune of 30 per month.

They're taking technology to the next level, offering bigger screens and an even wider selection of games, which begs the question, "Is all this really better?"

A recent survey found, that 71 percent want more "novelty" in their lives. That figure is up from 67 percent a year earlier. The research indicates there is a boredom boom. In fact, Reader's Digest magazine says boredom is the disease of our time. But why?

Dr. Richard Winter is a psychologist and professor at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He suggests Americans are being entertained to death.

"Boredom may come from over stimulation. There is a sense that you need more and more excitement, more stimulation to keep you interested," Winter explained.

"You see the extreme of it in the desire in 'Fear Factor' to do grosser and more disgusting things, and there is a strange fascination, we sit and watch it."

And even younger Americans agree that our quest for entertainment has gone too far. One teen-aged girl said, "Some people abuse the Internet access like a lot and they're like on it for hours at a time."

Another young girl said, "Sometimes it keeps me from doing other things. I'm like attached to the TV screen."

One boy explained, "We were raised in a generation based on technology and stuff like that, so it's like all we know."

In his book, "Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment", Dr. Winter examines how boredom has increased as more leisure time has become available. In fact, he says the average person today has about 33,000 more leisure hours than a person in the mid-1800's.

Winter said, "These are addictive pursuits, so that people spend hours and hours, and that becomes their reality. It's a sort of, they live in a virtual reality, rather than the real reality of God's world, the physical universe that we are set in."

A college student named Matt Wetsel told us, "There are LAN parties and 30 kids will show up and they all have machines that they've built and they bring their desktop machines, hook them up and play games all night over the network, share files. It's unbelievable."

Wetsel is a self-proclaimed "media junkie." He said, "Well, I can do everything on my computer. It's my stereo, because I rip all my CD's, so I just have a digital musical collection. I have surround sound on my computer. I can watch movies. I mean, I can do anything on it. I can talk to people. I can read the news and it's all from one chair."

But another young man sees that kind of lifestyle as a problem. He said, "That's the reason we've got all these bunch of fat tired people, you need, people need to get outside and exercise, play some basketball. Playin' Mario Kart on TV isn't gonna, it's not going to make you any healthier of a person."

M.I.T. graduate and author Eric Brende said, "I sometimes think of that as almost a form of voluntary quadriplegia. You're completely inert, I mean maybe your eyes are flickering, but the TV set is even doing your own imagining for you so your brain doesn't have to think."

Brende has written a new book called, "Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology". Brende admits he became disillusioned with technology, so he set out to limit his usage. "The goal was to try to see if life would be easier with less technology. We don't have a television set and of course that means when we entertain ourselves we have to do it ourselves," he said.

Dr. Winter says it's all about moderation. By cutting down on or eliminating even just one gadget you can have a simpler, more meaningful life.

"It's like withdrawing from an addiction, you know. It's little by little, step by step, choosing another way," Winter said. "It's learning to regain a sense of wonder and curiosity about the natural world. We can use technology, but we need to keep in touch with the natural world."

And if you ask Eric Brende, he will tell you his family is better off without it. "If our kids go outside and play a game, play kickball in the schoolyard across the street, at the end they're kind of tired, they're kind of worn out. But they feel a sense that they've really sunk their teeth into something. It wasn't empty or imaginary."

Brende continued, "Try fasting from television for a week and see if you feel better. See if you feel more satisfied instead of bored."

Entertaining Ourselves to Death