Hours Spent Watching TV May Shorten Life Expectancy

Watching television for many hours a day was associated with an increased risk for premature death in a study of healthy young adults, while computer use and time spent driving showed no significant association with higher mortality. Study participants who reported watching 3 or more hours of television daily had a twofold increased death risk over 8 years of follow-up, compared with participants who said their viewing time did not exceed 1 hour a day (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 2.04, 95% CI 1.16-3.57), researcher Miguel Angel Martinez-Gonzales, MD, PhD, of the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Heart Association.