Television Anonymous.

Most addicts eventually figure out that they have a problem. People understand that acceptance is the first step toward kicking a habit. However, in the last few decades, a more insidious substance than drugs has managed to worm its way into the hearts and homes of families, and no one seems to want to recognize the problem. Americans run the risk of becoming full-blown TV addicts and while avid viewing may not leave track marks, it imperils its victims in a number of other ways. Cheryl Pawlowski, Ph.D. brought awareness to this fast-growing phenomenon in her factoid-filled handbook for the TV junkie, Glued to the Tube: The Threat of Television Addiction to Today's Family (Sourcebooks, 275 pp.).

Millions of children in the developed world, become latch-key kids at the end of the school day. They come home to an empty house, a sugary snack and the loving arms of "the ultimate baby-sitter and friend" -- the television. "From a child's perspective, an empty house can be a very lonely and threatening place. Television provides noise and companionship, and gives the illusion that they are not alone," wrote Pawlowski. This seemingly innocuous behavior that most children unthinkingly engage in leads to nothing but a nation of kids "clad in the latest MTV-inspired outfit, eyes glazed over and ... grossly overweight."

The fact is that more Americans have television sets than have indoor plumbing -- an alarming statistic when coupled with the author's finding that "today's average child will eventually spend about 10 years of his or her life watching TV." Add this to yet another distressing actuality -- 60 percent of Americans will never again in their lives pick up a book after they finish schooling -- and the future is a bleak wasteland filled with uneducated clods who have televisions, but little else.

Pawlowski devoted the bulk of her work to describing the seven major roles that used to be reserved exclusively for the family -- family manager, cultural narrator, gender mentor, sexual advisor, hero, arbitrator and friend. These positions have now been sub-planted by the TV. Family interaction has dwindled to a point where wordlessly viewing the tube in groups is considered quality time together. Dens in most homes are arranged not to facilitate conversation but "to ensure a clear view of the TV!" Instead of Mommy and Daddy, a square-shaped box is now dictating how a household should be decorated and run.

"That is not to say that TV feeds the dog or buys the groceries," but many people have come to rely on it for decision-making cues. It tells parents "what to have for dinner, where this chair or that table is placed in the living room, who feeds the family pet, when Junior should be home." If grown-ups have trouble recognizing this destructive aspect of television, how can children even begin to decipher the messages?

They can't. These days, childhood is wasted on kids who long to grow up quicker than their parents did. They look to the television as their way out, their gateway to adulthood. "TV has the potential to destroy the very existence of childhood as a separate and distinct period in human development," Pawlowski noted.

TV creates a fantasy world in which "everyone is effortlessly affluent" and teenagers are allowed to gallivant as they please, no curfew in mind, "having sex and slaying vampires." Constant exposure to such unhealthy "lessons" is enough to force unsophisticated children toward a premature maturity where they assume sex and violence will surely play a part.

It probably will. But TV can give kids a warped sense of reality, leading them to believe that if they are "shot, knifed, beaten ... or otherwise pummeled," they will emerge unscathed. "He [the hero] may be bloodied, but rarely does he sustain significant injuries from abuse that would mutilate or kill most human beings," the author observed. This "happy violence" is perhaps most disturbing to Pawlowski, because it teaches impressionable youngsters that "a well-placed punch, karate chop, or bullet" is the answer to all of their problems.

It is evident that Pawlowski did mountains of research before she sat down to write her opus, nevertheless Glued is little more than an impressive collection of facts and figures designed to wow readers into submission. She offers few new remedies for this growing problem. If only the good doctor would have taken advantage of a lovely feature called spell check, this book might one day have fooled audiences into accepting it as the definitive scholarly work on the subject. Instead, readers will find themselves playing a rousing game of "Spot the Typo." For most authors, the correct uses of homonyms is a well-ingrained grammar school lesson. Alas, Pawlowski seems to have missed that day, mistaking words like "bazaar" for "bizarre" and "fair" for "fare," in an otherwise insightful work brimming with enough anti-boob tube ammo to blow the idiot box to smithereens. Her "shear" knowledge of TV shows past and present is astounding, leading one to question just how much time she spent channel-surfing even though, by her own account, "watching television is a passive behavior leading not only to atrophy of the mind but also the body." Sounds like someone's got a TV addiction.