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What is the thesis of this essay based on this introduction?

The word “addiction” is often used loosely and wryly in conversation. People will refer to themselves as “mystery book addicts” or “cookie addicts.” E. B. White writes of his annual surge of interest in gardening. : We are hooked and are making an attempt to kick the habit.” Yet nobody really believes that reading mysteries or ordering seeds by catalogue is serious enough to be compared to an addiction to heroin or alcohol. The word “addiction” is here used jokingly to denote a tendency to overindulge in some pleasurable activity. While people often refer to being “hooked on TV,” it does not fall into the light-hearted category of a pleasurable hobby that people pursue with unusual intensity like comic book collecting or knitting circles but the more serious and destructive addiction.

Public Comments

1. Although the word "addiction" is often used with humorous intent to describe pleasurable, conscious overindulgence in an essentially harmless activity, television addiction is a serious mental disorder in which the "viewer" is rendered powerless to change or even recognize the pathological nature of his behaviour, to perceive the adverse effects in his immediate environment and their increasingly destructive impact on his life.