Can reading be just as detrimental for you as TV watching?

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This idea popped into my head this morning and has been stuck all day so I thought I would write a forum about it. Everyone says that reading is great for you, it helps with concentration, enriches your vernacular, decreases anxiety/depression and enables richer meanings and vivid imaginations. But can’t television do the same? Researchers then claim that TV fills an empty, useless void in one’s life and has no logical enrichment or purpose besides providing light hearted entertainment. I don’t know if this is because I am on the autism spectrum but I feel that I am just as engaged when I watch TV as I am when I read. I get that when you read, you have more time to actively encode and process deeper meanings as you turn the page and pause but when I watch TV, I mentally pause in my brain and rehearse what has happened in a prior scene in order to figure out the main purpose. I do not like doing anything aimlessly, I’m realistic as it can get. So I enjoy reading a good non-fiction book as I do when I watch documentaries! Both are equally enriching, enlightening and satisfying. And if you were to watch a movie with limited intellectual ideas, such as twilight, and read that book, you would be engaging in mindless activities both ways. This is just my opinion. What is yours?

I find TV to be a bit lightweight and superficial. I watch a few natural history documentaries but I am often disappointed that too much of the programme is wasted by the apparent need to make everything overly dramatic. I just want the facts presented to me by an expert who knows what they are talking about.

I don't want bits of film from different sources edited together to make a drama with a dramatic soundtrack and celebrity voice over, which seems to be fairly typical for natural history documentaries nowadays. I also don't want to see lengthy filler shots of the presenter staring at the night sky or driving across a desert or doing anything else which suggests the programme is more about the presenter than the actual subject matter.

I'd much rather read a book written by a suitably qualified expert, preferably someone who has been involved in original research about the book's subject matter, or at the very least someone who knows how to draw together research from a number of different sources and present it in plain simple language. Personally I find reading to be far more satisfying and rewarding than watching TV. Watching TV is what I tend to do when I want to switch my brain off.

Yeah, I agree with that. I overall enjoy reading more because I like to visually think about what is going on and engross myself in the book itself, but I do feel myself doing the same with documentaries that are purely factually, like ones where they follow people in the homes and describe authentic encounters (or as authentic as television can get). But unfortunately, most documentaries are somewhat exaggerated from the truth, but when you find a good, factual one, then I feel it can be enriching.

With TV, someone else creates the pictures and their interpretation of the subject, so you're just a passive viewer. With a book, your imagination creates the pictures, and the world the book is set in.

I don't have a TV, but I don't read many books either .

I would much rather read than watch television. Most of my television watching consists of sports, especially tennis and the Olympic Games.

I'll watch movies like Rocketman and then spending time actively thinking about what it means while I'm working in the garden. Rocketman is an R rated gay film that shows the gritty side of Elton John's life when I was a young adult. Society has changed since then.

I find watching TV is a waste of time. It makes me watch things I don't want to see, such as advertising, and besides that I often just ended up watching something I found the least boring but did actually not want to really see seither. Watching something on TV demands a certain time slot for a certain amount of my time unless I pause and come back later, but with TV that is difficult. When I don't pay attention for a few moments or get interrupted, the TV programme doesn't wait for me like a book does. Even when I watched documentaries online, I found it quite mindless and passive and usually I only watch documentaries when I am desperately bored. I am better at picking up information from reading.
I don't have a TV and never want to have one, it would be wasting my space.

I think reading isn't physically healthy, because it can put strain on your eyes and make you sit in a bad posture.

Both require you to be physically quite inactive for the duration you engage in watching TV/reading, but reading demands physical inactivity even more. You could at least exercise in front of the TV. But how many people do that?

I don't think intellectually enriching books are superior to mindless books, especially not for me because I am usually a factory worker and building intellect would be a wasted endeavour. Even if the content of the book is "mindless", it helps train orthography, grammar and vocabulary.

Because TV is so passive it's better at brain washing, in my opinion.

On average I think neither reading nor TV is much more detrimental than the other.

What's wrong with comic books? I actually have a collection of comic books that I made by hand when I was younger, just for the fun of it. I used my skills and talent to make them entirely by hand.

And some non-fiction or hardcover books are not worth the paper they're printed on. There's this website I go to called Awful Library Books, and there's a lot of hilarious and cringy examples of books that need to be removed from library. Sometimes it's simply because the books are outdated, but then there's the stuff that's just really messed up.

When newspapers came out people were worried others would socialize less cuz they'd be reading to get their news instead of hearing it by word of mouth. Reading ended up becoming very popular thou(there's LOTS of things to read other than books) so now it's TVs turn to face the negative stigma

I think it depends on what you are reading or watching.

TV shows can be engaging, informative and even educational. Some shows, like competitive reality shows, are not usually much more than light entertainment. With TV, it's easy to stare at it without taking much in. You can be looking at it, but not really watching it. When you read, you need to focus so you can read, and that is one thing that could make books "better."

Any type of reading is supposed to be good for you because it keeps your mind sharp and active, which is only one of the reasons it is good for you. Some books are badly written, which makes them similar to some "rubbish" TV shows.

Video games are usually seen as being even more detrimental than watching TV, but they can have health benefits and can be informative or educational. I see them as a combination of watching TV and reading books.

The Internet has a lot of different sides, and some can be very bad for you. When it's used for the right reasons, I think it could be almost as good for you as reading books.

We need escapism, too.

As long as it doesn’t claim to be something “higher,” I don’t mind a little mindless comedy—like the Three Stooges or Beavis and Butt-Head.

People can be just as much of a couch potato reading books as they can watching tv.

But a more PRODUCTIVE couch potato