If the Internet can “addict” you to its tempting offerings of Facebook friends and access to information inconceivable even two decades ago, imagine the evils lurking withing your flat-screen TV.

That’s what researchers at the University of Pittsburgh did and found that in 4,142 healthy teens, the more TV they watched, the more depression they reported. Could depressed people simply be more lethargic and less motivated to get off the couch? Or is the TV causing the depression?

As usual, the researchers can’t answer that relevant question, so we have yet another correlational study splashed all over the news media with the not-so-subtle suggestion that television is causing your teen’s mood problems. But that doesn’t stop the researchers, and the media, from hypothesizing that it is indeed a causal relationship:

In 2002, when the participants were interviewed again in their 20s, 308 of them met the criteria for depression, the study found. Teens who became depressed had watched 22 more minutes of TV each day, on average, compared with teens who did not. That dose-response relationship suggests that the boob tube was at least partly to blame, said Primack, a family practice physician.

Sorry, Dr. Primack, your study cannot say a single word about causation because it wasn’t designed to answer a causative question. It is equally plausible that depressed young adults watch more TV than their non-depressed counterparts. And 22 minutes? That’s a single half-hour sitcom. Hardly something to hang your hat on there…

The bigger problem with studies like this is that because they can never measure all the relevant variables in a person’s growing life (and especially that stressful, emotional, and lengthy transition from one’s teens to one’s young adulthood), there is an equal chance and possibility that some factor not even measured or considered by the researchers could account for this relationship.

But none of that would make for an interesting news story, so let’s just gobble the up the tidbit that “TV causes depression in young adults” and move on to the next useless correlational study.

Read the news report on the study: Study links TV and depression

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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Popular People » Blog Archive » Adult Fare: the Degrassi Diet « Mr Media’S Blog (2/4/2009)

Popular People » Blog Archive » Adult Fare: the Degrassi Diet « Mr Media’S Blog (2/4/2009)

Depressivum Fernseher « Netzwelten (2/5/2009)

The televised teacher… and how to change class rooms « Inside the Belly (2/8/2009)

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 3 Feb 2009
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