A study released yesterday reveals that adults who watch three or more hours a day of television double their risk of early death. The study was released in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Nielsen recently reported that adults watch an average of at least five hours of television a day, so this latest study doesn’t bode well for humanity.
“Our findings are consistent with a range of previous studies where time spent watching television was linked to mortality,” said lead author Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, chair of the department of public health at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
The study was among 13,000 adults who had graduated from Spanish universities. The average age was 37, with 60% of the participants being women. People were followed for a median of 8.2 years. Television wasn’t the only object of study in the research, also under investigation was time spent of front of a computer and driving time.
It’s important to note that the study doesn’t “prove that television watching caused the early deaths, just that an association could be found between more TV-viewing and a higher chance of dying, even when researchers adjusted for other potentially confounding factors.” Among those in the study, cancer killed 46 people, 32 died from “other causes” and 19 were died from cardiovascular problems.
“Our findings suggest adults may consider increasing their physical activity, avoid long sedentary periods, and reduce television watching to no longer than one to two hours each day,” said Martinez-Gonzalez.