"Passively watching TV" feels like a common target for brain health/strength/etc discussions. I'm curious if there's been any studies into the differences that engagement with television programs can have on the brain. There's been a whole breadth of television programming over the decades. I think it would be wrong to treat it all as equal in regards to how it impacts your brain.
I don't even think it's the same across viewers. When my partner and I watch some shows, we make prediction for the plot and evaluations of characters. We even have a bet book where we record and score predictions for some shows. It's makes watching much more engaging, especially if the creators hide details and foreshadowing in the background. But you don't even need high quality content to do this, just tighten the restrictions. Law and Order and Hallmark movies only get 30 seconds of content before we make predictions.
It's much more stimulating than just passive consumption. If I don't do this I feel like brain turns to mush after a few hours of TV.
My wife and I do this for Survivor and The Amazing Race. We’re very engaged, debating strategy, making predictions. And then we watched with other people and they just … watched.
I've seen people be smug that they read books and don't watch TV before, but this is the first time I've seen someone be smug that they watch reality TV better than someone else.
You're right, this does come off as smug. It was really more of a culture clash; they were annoyed at us for talking over the show, and we didn't realize that not everyone talked over it. We enjoy engaging with the shows this way, but no disrespect or superiority was intended.
Below Deck is our guilty pleasure for reality TV. We make predictions on who is going to get with whom, at what stage in the season certain people implode, who will get fired. I think Aesha from Below Deck was on the Australian Amazing Race. Also the show has an upstairs/downstairs dynamic we like. It's similar to shows like Downton Abbey.
Writing down predictions with some weighting for confidence is a great way to find out directly just how goddamned bad humans are at predicting things and how good we are at forgetting all the bad predictions we make.
Or just otherwise forcing yourself to be accountable for your predictions is a great way to moderate your ego.
It comes down to your level of engagement, if you are interested in and knowledgeable about any of the arts which comprise TV/Film (acting, directing, set dressing, etc) you are very likely to more actively engage with TV than the average person does with literature.
I was an avid reader, then I had to stop due to eye problems and because I did not want "staring at a thing" to be my hobby when it was also my day job as a data scientist.
While I still spend a lot of my working life staring at a screen, taking acting and filmmaking as a hobby has enabled me to enjoy many other aspects. Even if the plot/character is lousy (e.g. "Heated rivalry") I enjoy looking at the director's choices and analyzing them. My wife jumped ship and every time we watch something we have a discussion about it, which is something I had never done with books.
It truly is the level of engagement, not the medium.
When I talk to people about videos we both watched, I'm struck by how much more they remember. Meanwhile I can lecture about any book I've read while other people can barely scrap together a sentence. Different mediums engage different brains.
I think there was some study where it was somewhat confirmed that watching people exercise had some beneficial effect without doing any exercise yourself.
